Polygon raises $450 million in a funding round led by Sequoia India

Polygon, a decentralized Ethereum scaling platform, has raised $450 million in a private token sale led by Sequoia India. The funding will be used to build Web3 decentralized applications or dApps, including Polygon PoS, Polygon Edge, and Polygon Avail. This is Polygon’s first major financing round since the project began in 2017.

According to Bloomberg, Polygon said it raised $450 million by selling its MATIC token to investors led by Sequoia Capital India. This is the first time it has invested in Polygon, a representative stated.

“Thousands of developers across a range of applications are choosing Polygon and their complete set of scaling solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem,” Shailesh Lakhani, managing director at Sequoia India, said in a statement. “This is an ambitious and aggressive team, one that values innovation at its core. Sequoia Capital India is thrilled to lead this significant financing round.”

Over 40 additional investors participated in the token round, including Tiger Global, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Republic Capital, Alan Howard, Alexis Ohanian, Animoca Brands, Dragonfly Capital, and Kevin O’Leary. The funds will be raised through a private sale of Polygon’s MATIC token, it said.

“Web3 builds on the early internet’s open-source ideals, enabling users to create the value, control the network and reap the rewards,” Polygon Co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said in a statement. “Ethereum, scaled by Polygon, will be the bedrock of this next stage in the Web’s evolution.”

The network stated that the funding will be used to build Web3 decentralized applications, or dApps, including Polygon PoS, Polygon Edge, and Polygon Avail, which is similar to Amazon Web Services for Web2 developers. Additionally, capital will be used to invest in zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, which will help onboard users to Ethereum.

“Technological disruption didn’t start with Web2, nor is it going to end there,” Nailwal stated. “That’s why we are very excited to see some of the same firms that funded the previous round of innovation now being our Web3 vision.”

Polygon is a collection of layer-2 protocols pursuing a range of scaling approaches. Its proof-of-stake commit chain (PoS) carries some of the lowest transaction rates across crypto blockchains, making it a popular choice for Web3 platforms and developers like lending platform Aave and NFT marketplace OpenSea.

MATIC, the Polygon token, has a market capitalization of about $14.7 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. It added about 17% in the 24 hours following the announcement.

Over 5 years ecosystem has scaled dramatically and more than doubled in the past year from about 3,000 dApps in October 2021 to over 7,000 dApps by the end of January.

The number of dApps on Polygon’s network has increased 23,233% on the year from just 30 dApps in January 2021, showing significant growth in the Ethereum-focused community.

In December 2021, The network partnered with Seven Seven Six to launch a $200 million initiative to support social media projects on Web3.

During that time, Polygon also acquired a ZK tech startup Mir in a $400 million deal to scale Ethereum and bring more users to Web3.

Last December, Polygon and Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm, Seven Seven Six, announced a $200 million initiative backing projects operating at the intersection of social media and so-called Web 3.0. The initiative will focus on gaming applications and social media platforms built on Polygon’s infrastructure.