Polygon Foundation CEO Compares Vision of 'All Funds on Chain' to Climbing Mount Everest, Says It's the Ultimate Goal but Cannot Be Achieved in One Go
Sandeep Nailwal, CEO of the Polygon Foundation, compared the vision of 'all funds on chain' to climbing Mount Everest, stating that this is the ultimate goal, but it cannot be achieved in one go. Progress must be made in stages, like climbing, where each new high market value and technical milestone serves as a 'base camp' on the way to the summit. He emphasized that for any company worth building in the long term, the path is the same: steps cannot be skipped; the next layer of foundation must be continuously built before ascending higher.
In previous public interviews and discussions about the Polygon 2.0 and Open Money Stack roadmap, Nailwal has repeatedly proposed a similar structural breakdown: first bringing stablecoins and RWA settlements on-chain, then connecting payments, clearing, and governance through AggLayer and a unified security layer across multiple chains, ultimately forming a global settlement network where 'funds flow freely on-chain like information.' The practical significance of this 'base camp' approach is that it breaks down the goal of 'reconstructing global financial infrastructure on-chain' into measurable stage objectives, making it easier for internal execution and external expectation management.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Nailwal's Everest metaphor reflects a breakdown of the narrative and infrastructure of 'on-chain finance': putting all funds on-chain is not a project that can be completed in a single product or cycle, but a long-term endeavor that requires accumulation across multiple dimensions of technology, regulation, liquidity, and user behavior. Each 'base camp'—for example, from DeFi native assets to stablecoin settlements, then to RWA and cross-border payments—must first achieve sustainable protocol economics locally to support further ascent; otherwise, it risks a 'high-altitude reaction' collapse midway.
This phased approach also corresponds to Polygon's architectural design of 'stability layer vs. evolution layer': viewing the settlement layer, security, and verification processes as an immutable 'mountain,' while treating the execution environment, applications, and user experience as 'base camps' that can be rapidly iterated. Through AggLayer and Open Money Stack, consolidating the liquidity of multiple chains and stablecoin settlements onto a unified security layer essentially builds a backbone network of a 'funds highway,' allowing different applications and regions to gain localized expansion space without sacrificing security—similar to the structure of 'core clearing systems + local bank networks' in traditional finance.
From a global financial structure perspective, the real difficulty in 'moving money on-chain' is not the technical TPS but regulation and asset mapping: stablecoins, deposit substitutes, and RWA directly touch the vested interests of banks, payment networks, and capital markets. Any attempt at a radical path to 'summit' in one go will face strong resistance in regulation and compliance. Polygon's strategy of 'starting with cross-border payments and stablecoin settlements, then gradually introducing more types of assets' corresponds to ascending a slope with relatively less regulatory friction—first proving the efficiency and reliability of on-chain settlements, then seeking institutional space at higher levels of assets and businesses.
In the longer term, describing the expansion path as 'mountaineering rather than sprinting' also reshapes the industry's understanding of time and risk. After experiencing multiple rounds of overcommitment, bubbles, and liquidations, Nailwal emphasizes 'no skipping steps, only building base camps,' conveying a rhythm of development closer to infrastructure construction to the market: if the goal is to support real global capital flows rather than just speculative capital, then assessing a network's value should not only consider short-term TVL and token price but whether it genuinely absorbs new real use cases and institutional recognition at each 'base camp stage.' This rhythm, once adopted by mainstream L2s and settlement layers, will pull crypto back from the 'get-rich-quick narrative' to the long, steady reconstruction of financial pipelines.