Polygon CEO questions loyalty to Ethereum amid growing criticism of the Foundation

Excerpt from Geth core developer Péter Szilágyi memo to EF. Source: GitHub.

One of Szilágyis pain points was about how EF handles compensation and recognition for its contributors. He said that while the Foundation publicly calls him a leader in the ecosystem, its internal actions do not reflect that status.

“Almost all the initial employees of the Foundation have left long ago as that was the only reasonable way to actually have a compensation proportional to the value being created,” Szilágyi propounded.

He accused the Foundation of taking advantage of developers‘ commitment because it “overly abused the fact that some people were in this for principles, not for the money,” further citing Vitalik Buterin’s quote that “if someones not complaining that they are paid too little, then they are paid too much.”

Polygon still in the shadows of Ethereum

Nailwal also used his post to address Polygons decision to stick in line with Ethereum, but admitted the direction may have come at a financial cost. He estimated that if Polygon were to brand itself as a standalone Layer-1 network, it could be valued “two to five times higher” than it is today.

“Like think about it, Hedera Hashgraph, an L1, is valued higher than Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll combined,” he reckoned.

He added that the Ethereum community undermines Polygons position, neither recognizing it as a true Layer-2 nor including it in the “Ethereum beta.”

“They don‘t seem to understand that Polygon PoS effectively hinged on Ethereum, while Katana, XLayer, and dozens of other chains in Polygon’s ecosystem are true L2s…When Polymarket wins big, it‘s ’Ethereum, but Polygon itself is not Ethereum. Mind-boggling,” Nailwal complained.

Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje also supported Nailwal‘s and Szilágyi’s outcry of having zero support from EF.

“So who is EF paying/supporting？ While building on ETH I have burned over 700 ETH on deployments and ETH infra. I tried contacting EF, never a response, no BD outreach, no grants, 0 support, not even a retweet,” he continued, “If it isn‘t the core builders, Peter & Geth, and it isn’t the loudest L2 supporters, Sandeep and Polygon, where is it going？”

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