Source: “When Shift Happens”, Youtube

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

From working as a servant in a storeroom inherited from his ancestors, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal has built a blockchain company valued at $30 billion. Sandeep Nailwal works 18 hours a day, dedicated to making Polygon a global payment platform like Stripe. Below are the highlights from the interview in the PANews compilation of the “When Shift Happens” podcast.

Host: I hear your team say that no matter what time of day it is, you always reply in seconds. Do you sleep very little every day?

Sandeep: Yes, I mean, I do sleep, but my mind is always on Polygon, I’m online 24 hours.

Host: What does your daily routine look like?

Sandeep: My routine is quite upside down. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, and I work according to U.S. time, so I really only get busy after 2 PM, working until around 11 PM to midnight, and I sleep from 2 to 2:30 AM. Sometimes my son wakes up between 7 and 7:30 AM, so I get up to play with him. So I often only sleep 4 to 5 hours.

Host: I previously interviewed Tether CEO Paolo, and he said he has only slept 5 hours a night for 11 years, waking up every hour to check notifications.

Sandeep: Paolo is managing a much bigger “ship.” I have a good relationship with him; he is an incredibly talented and crazy person. He is completely immersed in his vision. I have never seen a team as small as Tether’s, where everyone believes so wholeheartedly in the spirit of blockchain. They genuinely want a personal, sovereign monetary system. So I’m not surprised at all by their great success.

Host: What do you think your mission is?

Sandeep: My mission is what I’ve always said: sovereign individuals. Many people in the crypto space want to build a monetary system. This should be a free personal monetary system where individuals can manage their wealth as they wish. What I truly want is complete sovereignty for individuals: not just money. Money is actually a product of civilization, and civilization is built on “controlled violence,” which is the layer of law and order. Now we are working on global currency, Bitcoin… but to achieve a truly borderless world, having money alone is not enough; you also need to decentralize the layer of “controlled violence.”

This sounds very sci-fi, but it is actually starting to become feasible. In the future, there could be drone and robot police forces controlled by a completely decentralized AI, not dictated by any company or government. Imagine a ‘super brain’ controlled by all of humanity, with its own constitution, specifically protecting everyone’s safety. This way, borders would truly be broken, and individuals could gain real freedom. That’s why I co-founded Sentient AI; the other three co-founders are working full-time on it, while I’m too busy with Polygon, but this is my deepest goal: to align AI with human interests, ultimately achieving external governance and control.

It sounds like science fiction, but once Polygon and the entire crypto industry become more stable, I will invest more. Right now, crypto has just entered a truly practical stage; DeFi is a practical track, but 70-80% of lending is leveraged speculation. Now stablecoins and cross-border payments are just starting to rise. I have been in this business for 8 years and want to continue for another 10-15 years to see it fully mainstreamed before deciding what to do next.

Host: So who exactly are you?

Sandeep: I am a global citizen who wants complete sovereignty. I am very law-abiding and hope everyone else is too, but everyone should have the right to “exit.” I can even imagine that in 20, 30, or 40 years, you could have your own small space capsule, take off whenever you want to detach from all systems, and wander alone in the solar system. At that time, a monetary system not controlled by any single government and a neutral policing system will be needed, protected by the humans of that time and awakened AI, safeguarding all life (including AI itself), allowing everyone to live by their own rules. So I take freedom very seriously, which may also be related to my background from India—many people don’t know that the core value of Indian civilization is freedom, and it has been so for thousands of years.

Host: What happened in your life that made you so hungry for success?

Sandeep: I have been thinking about this question for a long time. I had a really tough childhood, which I have mentioned in many podcasts. India during my childhood was almost a third-world country. My grandfather and father were servants in wealthy families, and that’s how they met; later, they decided to arrange marriages for their children, which led to my parents. I was always among the top students in school and respected wherever I went, but at home, it was a completely different world.

I didn’t dare to bring friends home when I was 21 or 22; I didn’t want them to see what my home was like. Five of us squeezed into one room, plus a small kitchen. There was no living room, no bedroom, just one room. We lived in a makeshift storeroom on the roof of someone else's two-story house; the owner rented it to us to make some money. In the summer, it was as hot as a steamer. When I was five or six, my grandfather was still alive, and the family he served passed away, leaving behind a large hotel, and my grandfather became the caretaker. Sometimes when the owner was away, my grandfather would take me to play, and I naively thought that this big house was my home. I would come back and boast to my friends that this was my house. Perhaps it was from that time that I developed a ‘never give up’ spirit. I always said: I must become a big person, never settle for small things, and I won’t accept failure. But I had no idea how to succeed; everyone laughed at me.

Host: How did you get into blockchain and cryptocurrency?

Sandeep: I’ve said before that I didn’t get into the industry because of Bitcoin. I saw Bitcoin several times and thought it looked like a pyramid scheme, so I ignored it. It had no backing, so how could it have value?

But at the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017, when I first read the Ethereum white paper and Vitalik’s blog, I was deeply moved. They actually created a computer that is run by countless people, yet no one can own it unilaterally, and it is always online. The next thought was, what if we could write complex business logic on this computer, and no matter what happens, it executes it word for word? I thought this was something that would truly change the world. So I started to get involved for real, and I’m still here now.

Host: What was the most difficult moment during the 8 years since Polygon was launched?

Sandeep: In the first year and a half, there were several times when we almost ran out of money to pay salaries. December 2019 was the worst; I woke up one morning to find someone had shorted MATIC (then called MATIC) heavily, and the price dropped 70% in one day. The whole network was calling me a scammer, but those were just isolated incidents. The hardest times are actually always now—it's always the hardest for Polygon right now.

Host: Why build Polymarket on the blockchain?

Sandeep: This is a very good question; many competing platforms do not put their market data on-chain at all. If two platforms have similar user experiences, one is blockchain-based: you own your content, funds, and fans; the other is centralized, and the answer is obvious—everyone will choose the more open one. Now, Polymarket has achieved network effects; it has verifiability, transparency, and credibility, and no matter who comes to compete, Polymarket can maintain its dominance in the long run.

Host: But why specifically on the Polygon chain?

Sandeep: In 2020, Polygon was the fastest-growing blockchain at that time, while Ethereum was very costly. The choice of Polygon is related to the network effects of the blockchain.

Host: Why is the intersection of AI and blockchain so important for the future of humanity?

Sandeep: Blockchain is a payment platform, and AI is an intelligence platform; technically, there is no direct relationship. But the key is: AI is the largest centralized force in human history, and the only technology currently pushing for the decentralization of power is cryptocurrency.

Host: Why are you so invested in charity?

Sandeep: Everyone experiences pain in life, and then there are two choices: one is, I’ve suffered, so you all must suffer too; the other is, I’ve suffered, so let’s make it so everyone suffers a little less. I choose the second one, purely for my own happiness.

Related reading: Polygon teams up with a new partner, the new bank Revolut chooses its tech stack to promote crypto payments

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