Polygon Cofounder Jaynti Kanani Steps Down To Pursue New Opportunities

Polygon cofounder Jaynti Kanani has stepped down from his role at the blockchain scaling platform. 

“After kick starting Polygon in 2017, around 6 months back, I decided to step back from the day-to-day grind,” Kanani said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. 

As per his LinkedIn bio, he served as the cofounder of Polygon till March 2023. 

Bidding adieu to the company, Kanani said he will now focus on new ‘adventures’ while still ‘cheering and contributing’ to the blockchain startup from the sidelines. He also expressed confidence over the startup’s ‘bright future and passionate community’ and said he is bullish on Polygon 2.0. 

Reacting to the announcement, fellow Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal tweeted, “Man this makes me emotional. What a ride we’ve had together brother. But it is just the start for Polygon, I wish we could’ve done more for longer together in this crazy journey that is Polygon. But hey, you got to do what you got to do.”

The development comes seven months after another Polygon cofounder Anurag Arjun departed from the company and took charge as the cofounder of a new startup, Avail. Now, Nailwal and Mihailo Bjelic are the only cofounders of Polygon that are still with the startup. 

Kanani’s LinkedIn bio now lists him as the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of presumably two new startups – generative AI-based Morphic and web3 platform Mozak. 

An alumni of Gujarat’s Dharmsinh Desai University, Kanani completed his degree in engineering in 2011 and then worked at companies such as Persistent System and Housing. Eventually, Kanani, alongside Nailwal and Arjun, founded Matic Network in 2017. This would eventually morph into what is now Polygon. 

Kanani became one of the first crypto billionaires in the country after Polygon raised a mammoth $450 Mn in its venture capital (VC) financing round, led by Peak XV Partners, then Sequoia India, at a valuation of $14.4 Bn last year. 

Kanani is said to have stepped down from the company around the same time as Polygon undertook mass layoffs at the company earlier this year. In February, the blockchain scalability platform culled 20% of its workforce as part of a restructuring exercise amid the ongoing crypto winter.

Backed by the likes of SoftBank, Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global, Republic Capital and others, Polygon, earlier this year, said it has crystallised its strategy for the next 5 years to drive mass adoption of web3 by scaling Ethereum. 

With the crypto ecosystem in doldrums and investors shying away from the sector, the startups in the space have been going through a rough patch. From dwindling funding numbers to falling user numbers, the crypto ecosystem has been pummelled by a host of headwinds.