Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal publicly questioned his “loyalty to Ethereum,” sparking a rare, unvarnished introspection across the ecosystem that prompted immediate responses from major contributors, investors, and ultimately Vitalik Buterin himself. The exchange, which took place on
Is the Ethereum Foundation a “Shitshow”?
“I read this from Peter and realized it was time for me to speak up too,” Nailwal wrote, referring to lead developer Péter Szilágyi’s decision on October 19 to publish a letter he says he sent to EF management about 18 months ago. Nailwal, who considers Ethereum and Buterin his entry point and inspiration, said his long-standing moral loyalty to Ethereum has come at a personal and professional cost: “While I/we have never received direct support from the EF or Ethereum CT community – in fact, it’s the other way around. But I have always felt a moral loyalty to Ethereum even though (it) may have cost me money. billion dollars in the valuation of Polygon. “
Nailwal’s criticism is both cultural and financial. “The Ethereum community as a whole has been a shit show for some time,” he wrote, adding that recurring public crises are making major contributors “wonder what they’re doing here.” He said friends, including AkshayBD (chief marketing officer of the Solana Foundation and co-founder of SuperteamDAO), had urged him to declare Polygon as L1 and “walk away from this circus”, and claimed that the community’s “socialist behavior” had trolled Polygon despite its contributions “because of an arbitrary ‘technical definition’.”
He argued that the market structure punishes Polygon for refusing the L1 label: “It is widely believed that if Polygon decided to call itself L1, its value would probably be 2-5 times higher than it is today,” highlighting a now widely discussed comparison: “Think about it, Hedera Hashgraph and L1 have a higher value than Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll combined.” »
The classification conflict, according to Nailwal, has concrete consequences for recognition and inclusion in the index. He insisted that “Polygon PoS was indeed built on top of Ethereum, while Katana, XLayer, and dozens of other chains in Polygon’s ecosystem are true L2s,” but “the Ethereum community ensures that Polygon is never considered an L2 and is never included in the markets-perceived Ethereum beta.” He added that a “prominent Polygon stakeholder” chastised him because he “couldn’t get Polygon on GrowthPie, which refuses to list the Polygon chain,” and compared how Polymarket’s success is attributed to “Ethereum,” even though “Polygon itself is not Ethereum.”
Despite the frustration, Nailwal said he intends to try once again to realign the technical and social consensus around scaling: “I’m going to give one last push that might just jump-start the entire L2 narrative. Stick with me for a few more weeks.” He concluded with a nuanced defense of the disorder: “Ethereum is a democracy – and in any democracy, people on all sides end up unhappy. But it’s still the only system that really works in the long run.”
The thread sparked immediate reactions from prominent builders. Andre Cronje – who says he spent “over 700 ETH on ETH deployments and infrastructure” during his Ethereum years – bluntly questioned EF’s support priorities. “Tried contacting EF, never a response, no BD awareness, no grants, 0 support, not even a retweet,” Cronje wrote. Comparing his experience to Fantom’s Sonic ecosystem, he said he was “confusing” to see the teams there receiving BD support, grants, TVL, audits and marketing, and asked: “If it’s not the main builders, Peter & Geth, and it’s not the loudest supporters of L2 (Sandeep and Polygon), where does it go?”
Tommy Shaughnessy of Delphi Ventures framed the problem as undercompensation for irreplaceable talent. “The Ethereum Foundation should pay its developers like professional athletes.(…) The Ethereum Foundation basically pays people to leave. The best developers should be paid like professional athletes.”
Vitalik Buterin reacts
Buterin responded several hours later with an unusually personal note of appreciation for Nailwal and Polygon’s contributions, while also proposing a technical path forward. “I truly appreciate both @sandeepnailwal’s personal contributions and @0xPolygon’s extremely valuable role in the Ethereum ecosystem,” he wrote, name-checking Polygon’s role in hosting Polymarket, its first resource-intensive bets on ZK-EVM proof (“bringing on Jordi Baylina’s team”), the infrastructure for evidence aggregation via AggLayer and support for applications that need high levels of scalability.
On the central technical question – whether Polygon can and should strengthen its security guarantees with modern zero-knowledge proofs – Buterin argued that the market has moved towards a separation of concerns between L2 operators and ZK prover specialists.
“It is very difficult to be both the best L2 and the best ZK team, both have very different skill sets,” he wrote, citing standalone ZK providers and urging Polygon to “take the standard ZK technology that has now become quite good and apply it to the PoS chain to achieve full Phase 1 and later Phase 2 guarantees of Ethereum L1.”
He highlighted how far the economics have evolved: “Proving costs are around $0.0001/tx,” and said that many L2 teams “are very surprised when I tell them the recent numbers… The latest ZK-EVM, and live projects like @Lighter_xyz, show that this is false” regarding the idea that ZK is not viable at hyperscale.
At press time, ETH was trading at $3,873.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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