Polygon raises $450 Mn from Sequoia Capital, SoftBank to scale Ethereum

Polygon raised about $450 million through a private sale of its native MATIC token in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital India with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive, Tiger Global, Republic Capital and prominent investors like Alan Howard (co-founder, Brevan Howard) and Kevin O’Leary 

The funds will also allow Polygon to continue investing in cutting-edge zero knowledge (ZK) technology that will be key to onboarding the next billion users to Web3, as stated on the company blog.

“Web3 builds on the early Internet's open-source ideals, enabling users to create the value, control the network and reap the rewards. Ethereum, scaled by Polygon, will be the bedrock of this next stage in the Web's evolution," said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. "Technological disruption didn't start with Web2, nor is it going to end there. That’s why we are very excited to see some of the same firms that funded the previous round of innovation now being our Web3 vision."

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Some of the projects in Web3 building on Polygon include lending platform Aave to luxury brands company Dolce & Gabbana and NFT marketplaces including OpenSea and Mark Cuban’s Lazy.com.

“The platform of choice to build on the blockchain today is Polygon. Thousands of developers across a range of applications are choosing Polygon and their complete set of scaling solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem,” said Shailesh Lakhani, MD at Sequoia India. “This is an ambitious and aggressive team, one that values innovation at its core. Sequoia Capital India is thrilled to lead this significant financing round.”

Polygon PoS adoption has soared exponentially, with a billion transactions recorded last year. The network’s more than 130 million unique addresses and over 2.67 million monthly active users now generate some 3 million transactions per day, more than double the volume of Ethereum. Polygon’s native MATIC token has a market capitalization of over $12 billion, as stated on the company blog.

Polygon is also making major investments into ZK cryptography, a technology widely seen as the end game for blockchain scaling.