From the storeroom where his ancestors worked as servants, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal has built a blockchain company valued at $30 billion.
Article author: Felix
Source: PANews
From the storeroom where his ancestors worked as servants, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal has built a blockchain company valued at $30 billion. Sandeep Nailwal works 18 hours a day, dedicated to making Polygon a global payment platform for companies like Stripe. Below are the highlights from the interview featured in the (When Shift Happens) podcast, compiled by PANews.
Host: I hear from your team that no matter what time of day it is, you always reply within seconds. Do you sleep very little every day?
Sandeep: Yes, I mean, I do sleep, but my mind is always on Polygon, online 24 hours a day.
Host: What is your daily routine like?
Sandeep: My routine is quite upside down. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, and my working hours follow American time, so I only really start getting busy after 2 PM and work until 11 PM or midnight, going to bed around 2 to 2:30 AM. Sometimes, if my son wakes up between 7 and 7:30 AM, I get up to play with him. So I often only sleep 4 or 5 hours.
Host: I previously interviewed Tether CEO Paolo, and he said that for the past 11 years, he has only slept 5 hours each night and wakes up every hour to check notifications.
Sandeep: Paolo is in charge of a much larger 'ship.' I have a good relationship with him; he is an incredibly talented and also crazy person. He is completely immersed in his vision. I have never seen a team as small as Tether's, yet everyone believes so wholeheartedly in the spirit of blockchain. They genuinely want a personal, sovereign currency system. So I am not surprised at all by their current success.
Host: What do you think your mission is?
Sandeep: My mission is what I have always said: sovereign individuals. Many people in the crypto space want to build a currency system. This should be a free personal currency system where individuals can manage their wealth as they wish. What I truly want is complete sovereignty for individuals: not just money. Money is actually a product of civilization, and civilization is built upon 'controlled violence,' which is the layer of law and order. Right now, we are working on global currency, Bitcoin... but to achieve a truly borderless world, just having money is not enough; you need to decentralize the layer of 'controlled violence' as well.
It sounds very sci-fi, but it has actually started to become feasible. In the future, there could be drones and robotic police forces controlled by a completely decentralized AI, not dictated by any company or government. Imagine a 'super brain' controlled by all of humanity, with its own constitution specifically protecting everyone's safety. In this way, borders would truly be broken down, and individuals could achieve real freedom. That’s why I co-founded Sentient AI; the other three co-founders are working full-time on it, while I'm too busy with Polygon. But this is my deepest goal: to align the interests of AI and humanity, ultimately achieving external governance and control.
It sounds like science fiction, but once Polygon and the entire crypto industry become more stable, I will invest more. Right now, crypto has just entered a truly practical stage. DeFi is considered a practical track, but 70-80% of lending is leveraged speculation. Stablecoins and cross-border payments are just starting to rise. I have been in this business for 8 years and want to continue for another 10-15 years to see it fully mainstream before figuring out what to do next.
Host: So who exactly are you?
Sandeep: I am a global citizen who wants complete sovereignty. I am very law-abiding and hope everyone else is as well, but everyone should have the right to 'exit.' I can even imagine that in 20, 30, or 40 years, you could own your own small space capsule, take off to leave all systems behind, and wander alone in the solar system. At that time, a currency system that is not controlled by any single government and a neutral policing system will be needed, safeguarded by the humans and awakened AIs of that time, allowing everyone to live by their own rules. That’s why I take freedom very seriously, which may also be related to my roots in India — many people don't know that the core value of Indian civilization is freedom, and it has been so for thousands of years.
Host: What happened in your life that made you so hungry for success?
Sandeep: I have been thinking about this question for a long time. I had a really tough childhood, which I have mentioned in many podcasts before. My childhood in India was almost like a third-world country. My grandfather and grandpa were servants in wealthy families, and that’s how they met. Later, they decided to arrange marriages for their children, which is how my parents came to be. I was always among the top students in school and was respected wherever I went, but once I got home, it was a completely different world.
I was 21 or 22 and didn’t dare to bring friends home; I didn’t want them to see what my home was like. Five people squeezed into that one room, plus a small kitchen. There was no living room, no bedroom, just one room. We lived in a makeshift storage room on the rooftop of someone else's two-story house; the owner rented it to us to earn some rent. It was as hot as a steamer in the summer. When I was five or six, my grandfather was still alive; the owner he served passed away, leaving behind a large hotel, and my grandfather became the caretaker. Sometimes when the owner was away, my grandfather would take me to play, and at that time, I naively thought that this big house was my home. I would come back and boast to my friends that this was my house. Maybe it was from that time that I had a sense of 'not giving up' in my heart. I always said: I must become a big person, never settling for small things, and I won’t accept failure. But I had no idea how to succeed, and everyone laughed at me.
Host: How did you get involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency?
Sandeep: I have mentioned before that I didn't enter the industry because of Bitcoin. I saw Bitcoin several times and thought it looked like a pyramid scheme, so I ignored it. It had no backing; how could it have value?
But at the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017, when I first read the Ethereum white paper and Vitalik's blog, I was deeply moved; they actually created a computer that is run by countless people, yet no one can own it unilaterally, and it is always online. My next thought was, what if we could write complex business logic on this computer, and no matter what happens, it executes it exactly as written? I thought this was something that would truly change the world. So I began to truly get involved, and I've been doing it ever since.
Host: What has been the toughest moment in the 8 years since Polygon was launched?
Sandeep: In the early year and a half, there were several times I almost ran out of money to pay salaries. December 2019 was the worst; I woke up one morning to find someone had shorted MATIC massively (it was called MATIC at the time), and the price dropped 70% in one day. The entire network was calling me a scammer, but those were just isolated incidents. The hardest period has actually always been now — for Polygon, it is always the hardest now.
Host: Why does Polymarket need to be built on the blockchain?
Sandeep: This is a very good question. The market data of many competitors doesn’t even get on-chain. If two platforms have a similar user experience, one based on blockchain where you own your content, funds, and fans, and the other centralized, the answer is obvious; people will definitely choose the more open one. Now, Polymarket has already achieved network effects; it has verifiability, transparency, and credibility, and no matter who comes to compete, Polymarket can maintain its dominance in the long run.
Host: But why specifically the Polygon chain?
Sandeep: In 2020, Polygon was the fastest-growing blockchain at that time, while Ethereum had extremely high costs. The choice of Polygon is related to the network effects of the blockchain.
Host: Why is the intersection of AI and blockchain so important for the future of humanity?
Sandeep: The blockchain is a payment platform, AI is an intelligent platform, and there is no direct relation between the two technically. But the key point is: AI is the greatest centralized force in human history, and the only technology currently driving the decentralization of power is cryptocurrency.
Host: Why are you so invested in charity?
Sandeep: Everyone's life will experience pain, and then there are two choices: one is I have suffered, so you all must suffer too; the other is I have suffered, so I want everyone to suffer a little less. I chose the second option purely for my own happiness.
