“Check was ready”: Sandeep Nailwal refused to sell Polygon for $3 million in 2018
As the ICO hype of 2017-2018 was fading, a $3 million offer might have changed the Polygon (POL) strategy for good. Here’s why co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has no regrets about the offer he and his team decided to skip seven years ago.
Sandeep Nailwal, the founder of the Polygon (POL) blockchain and the CEO of Polygon Foundation, was offered $3 million for his business back in 2018. The decision to reject this offer was one of those that “feel wrong for years, but pay off in the long run,” he shared with his 342,000 X followers in a touching story.
As per Nailwal’s post, when the ICO raises dropped to $15-20 million — as the fundraising boom was losing its steam — he received a $3 million offer for Polygon, called Matic Network back then. Some influencers even told him that the “check was ready” and he was only required to seal the deal.
Despite the tiny funding — the co-founders received zero compensation for months — the team declined the offer as “easy money” always came with invisible chains. Right after the decision, things got even worse — Polygon was ghosted by VCs, Nailwal admits:
It got to a point where VCs wouldn’t even take our calls. I remember one meeting in Singapore where the VC literally said “I have to catch an Uber” while I was trying to walk him through while pitching also. I caught a glimpse on his phone that the car was 8 minutes out
The 2018 Crypto Winter decimated the dApps landscape that had been fueled by the ICO mania. To provide context, Ethereum (ETH), the biggest altcoin and the economic backbone of ICOs, lost 94% compared to its January 2018 peak.
In 2020, Matic Network was rebranded to Polygon, morphing from Ethereum’s L2 into a global DeFi Hub. The team secured a whopping $500 million in funding, staying true to its initial values. Polygon changed the way Ethereum (ETH) scaled and onboarded thousands of mainstream dApps.
In 2025, its ecosystem is getting closer to the release of Agglayer, a unique cross-chain interoperability infrastructure. The Polygon (POL) network itself remains active and revisits some records in various metrics.
For instance, Polygon (POL) cements itself as the go-to blockchain for small payments. One out of three small payments on-chain happens on Polygon (POL), new data says.
