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Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has said that Polygon and Sandeep Nailwal have significantly advanced the ecosystem. He noted that adopting zero-knowledge (ZK) solutions for the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain would enhance Layer-2 security guarantees. This statement was made on X.
"I really appreciate both Sandeep's personal contributions and Polygon's immensely valuable role in the ethereum ecosystem," said Buterin. "Polygon put a lot of resources into ZK-EVM proving early on, both by bringing in Jordi Baylina's team and through other efforts, and greatly helped in moving the space forward. Sandeep put a lot of his personal effort into CryptoRelief, which has made large contributions to biomedical infrastructure and research inside India. Personally, I hope that at some point soon Polygon can just pick up off the shelf ZK tech that has now gotten quite good and apply it to the PoS chain to get full stage 1 and later stage 2 guarantees from the ethereum L1."
As of October 2025, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal publicly criticized the Ethereum community and the Ethereum Foundation for not acknowledging Polygon’s contributions to scaling. This sparked a debate over whether the network should be considered a full-fledged Layer 2 or merely a sidechain. According to ForkLog, Nailwal said the Ethereum community "refuses to recognize Polygon as a full-fledged L2 solution" despite its contributions.
