Sequoia makes a big bet on Web3, leading a $450 million investment in Ethereum infrastructure startup Polygon

Ethereum infrastructure tech startup has raised a massive $450 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive, Tiger Global, Republic Capital, and other prominent investors like Alan Howard (co-founder, Brevan Howard) and Kevin O’Leary

Formerly called Matic Network, Polygon is the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Polygon said it eventually wants to become a decentralized version of Amazon Web Services. It’s part of a movement in crypto known as “Web3.”

In a statement, Sequoia India managing director Shailesh Lakhani said: “Thousands of developers across a range of applications are choosing Polygon and their complete set of scaling solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem. This is an ambitious and aggressive team, one that values innovation at its core.” In recent months, the hype around Web2 has attracted some of the biggest names in venture capital, including Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and now Sequoia.

Founded in 2017 by CEO Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, Jaynti Kanani, and Mihailo Bjelic, Polygon is the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 3000+ applications hosted, 1B+ total transactions processed, ~100M+ unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured.

Polygon provides a scaling solution and serves as a support layer to Ethereum, the platform behind the ether cryptocurrency, helping it process transactions at scale. With Polygon, users can scale their decentralized apps (DApps) on Ethereum in just 30 mins. Polygon has already helped to scale the performance of over 3000 DApps. The company has also received a lot of attention from companies willing to partner with them.

In just a few months, Web3 has taken the internet world by storm. The past few years have seen more people embrace the potential of a decentralized web following the debut of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. As it stands, most of the platforms that exist on the internet are built on Web 2.0; this includes social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as centralized applications offering a range of services.

“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.”

Since its first major financing round in 2017, Polygon has also attracted contributions from Alameda Research, Transcend Fund, Makers Fund, Animoca Brands, global video game leader and games industry investor Scopely, dune ventures, Union Square Ventures, Seven Seven Six, Elevation Capital, Sino Global Capital, DCG, Standard Crypto, Celsius, Dragonfly Capital, Variant Fund, Blue Pool Capital, WorkPlay Ventures (led by Zynga founder Mark Pincus), Third Point, Steadview Capital, and many more.