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Polygon co-founders say they've gotten rid of C-suite positions

Quick Take

  • Polygon no longer has C-suite positions such as CEO and COO.
  • Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic told The Block that the project is decentralized and cannot have such positions.

Ethereum scaling project Polygon no longer has C-suite positions such as CEO and COO.

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, who was also the COO of the project, has removed that position from his job title sometime this month, according to his LinkedIn profile.

When contacted, Nailwal told The Block that he recently updated his LinkedIn profile as Polygon has removed all C-suite positions.


Fellow Polygon co-founder Jaynti Kanani had the CEO role listed on his LinkedIn profile until Wednesday, but later removed it after The Block contacted Nailwal.

Why the shift?

Another co-founder of Polygon, Mihailo Bjelic, told The Block that Polygon, being a decentralized project, decided to quash C-level roles "months ago."

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"We want to make it even more decentralized," he said, adding that the functional degree of co-founders' work remains the same.

"Sandeep is in charge of all pretty much all the operations of the business side. Absolute nothing has changed here," he added.

Bjelic went on to compare Polygon to Ethereum, saying that the latter doesn't have C-suite positions either.

Earlier this month, the Polygon network was at risk of losing all of its more than 9 billion MATIC tokens (currently worth over $23 billion) due to a critical bug. But whitehat hackers discovered the bug and Polygon moved to upgrade its mainnet (or hard forked its network). In the process, Polygon paid a total of about $3.46 million in bug bounties to two whitehat hackers.

Polygon's removal of C-level positions comes as more crypto companies are declaring themselves decentralized and doing away with headquarters. Earlier this year, Coinbase said it is a "decentralized company" with no headquarters.

Binance, on the other hand, is now looking to set up headquarters somewhere because having no head office "doesn't go well with regulators," and some think the company is "dodgy," according to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Yogita Khatri is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things crypto. As one of the earliest team members, Yogita has played a pivotal role in breaking numerous stories, exclusives and scoops. With nearly 3,000 articles under her belt, Yogita holds the records as The Block's most-published and most-read author of all time. Prior to joining The Block, Yogita worked at crypto publication CoinDesk and The Economic Times, where she wrote on personal finance. To contact her, email: [email protected]. For her latest work, follow her on X @Yogita_Khatri5.