Ethereum scaling solution Polygon has witnessed a lot of adoption through partnerships with major brands like Starbucks and Adidas, which has increased the network’s popularity among cryptocurrency users. In the latest episode of the Hashing It Out podcast, Arjun Kalsy, Polygon’s former vice president of growth, breaks down how the network has attracted partnerships with major brands and how the project is driving mass crypto adoption.
Before leaving Polygon late last year, Kalsy led a team tasked with onboarding companies to promote the adoption of the network. According to him, talking to brands looking to pivot from Web2 to Web3 or add elements of the decentralized world to their platforms was always enjoyable. The onboarding process involved several technical meetings where the Polygon network and its capabilities were scrutinized by these major brands, who consider integrating other technologies “a big deal.”
Kalsy explained that after the first set of big brands announced partnerships with Polygon, more doors were opened for the network. As major brands evaluated and approved the network, other teams gained the confidence to work with Polygon.
Despite the network’s impressive growth, Kalsy believes there is so much more that could come out of its use of zero-knowledge rollups. Zk-Rollups technology is expected to increase the speed at which the layer-2 platform can achieve finality while ensuring high-level security.
After Polygon, Kalsy moved to BitDAO, where he is head of ecosystem at Mantle, an Ethereum layer-2 network with a modular design. At BitDAO, Kalsy is looking to onboard companies seeking to evolve from centralized structures to decentralized leadership. He argued that several companies would make the switch to decentralized governance in the coming years.
He argued that all new companies have a predictable trajectory that involves raising money at the early stage and going public as the company grows, which is a long winding journey that can be cut short with decentralized governance. He said that with decentralized autonomous organizations, new companies go public immediately, allowing them to benefit from the transparency and global coverage that comes with opening up the governance of a company to everyone.
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On the future of the cryptocurrency industry, Kalsy believes that the latest market downtrend is part of the regular ups and downs of all asset classes. He said the market recovery would be swift and could propel the industry to new highs.
In this episode, host Elisha Owusu Akyaw and Kalsy also discuss:
- Growth management at a major Web3 firm
- Evolution of companies into DAOs
- Polygon’s future technical upgrades — zero-knowledge rollups
- The growth of Ethereum scaling solutions
- BitDAO and the Mantle network
For more on Polygon’s growth and the pivot of companies from centralized entities to decentralized autonomous organizations, listen to episode six of Hashing It Out on the new Cointelegraph Podcasts page or Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or TuneIn.
