Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, a scaling platform for Ethereum, believes that Web3 gaming will play a significant role in driving widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies. During a May 25 Ask Me Anything session on Reddit’s r/India community, Nailwal was asked about real-life use cases for blockchain beyond trading and payments. In response, he expressed that gaming presents the most substantial opportunity for crypto, citing the launch of several top games in Web3 over the next 6-18 months.
Nailwal expressed interest in seeing if any of these games can successfully integrate crypto, noting that last year alone, Web3 games received over $2 billion in funding, with Polygon and its ecosystem players like Immutable X receiving the majority of funding. Nailwal expressed hope that some of these games would become successful.
Polygon and Immutable X announced their partnership in March to develop a scalable gaming blockchain that uses Polygon’s EVM-compatible zk-rollup technology. The network is set to launch in the coming months, and it is expected to make blockchain games faster, among other benefits.
In a related question, Nailwal was asked if crypto has become too speculative. While he did not refute the assertion, he explained that speculation has both helped and hurt crypto.
According to Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon, the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies has been both beneficial and detrimental to the industry. On the one hand, it has attracted top talent, but on the other hand, many users and applications are speculative in nature. Nailwal noted that speculation is a common occurrence in any burgeoning industry, as seen in the Gold Rush and Dot Com boom eras.
Regarding decentralization, Nailwal believes that while crypto is still in its early stages, only Bitcoin and Ethereum have achieved full decentralization. He added that progressive decentralization of protocols and applications is necessary as they gain more significance.
In response to a question about Polygon’s low Nakamoto Coefficient rating, which measures a blockchain network’s level of decentralization, Nailwal explained that Polygon is a multi-blockchain ecosystem with two public blockchains currently live. Polygon POS has a lower coefficient, but it is still larger than many other large blockchains. Nailwal stated that the goal is to eventually have thousands of validators in the Polygon ecosystem, and they are working on significant releases in the coming days.