Polygon Labs CEO: Prejudice against Indian co-founders hinders the growth of the web

On November 26th, according to Cryptoslate, Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, blamed racial bias against its co-founder Sandeep Nailwal for the Polygon network's difficulties in gaining wider adoption in the field. In a post published on the X platform on November 25th, Boiron suggested that Nailwal's Indian heritage has led to prejudice and hindered Polygon's approval, despite its widespread use throughout the blockchain industry. "If Sandeep were not Indian, Web3 would have embraced Polygon on a large scale, rather than treating Polygon as a second-class citizen even when its proof of stake is more commonly used than all blockchains combined," he wrote.
When a user in the cryptocurrency community argued that Indians already hold important positions in the world's largest technology companies, Boiron responded that geography also played a role. He pointed out that Indians in Western countries, such as EigenLayer's Sreeram Kannan, face far less bias than those working in India. Meanwhile, the broader Web3 community remains divided on the issue. Some users believe that Polygon's challenges stem from competition from the emerging Ethereum Layer 2 network or the network's own policies, rather than bias.