Consensus Toronto 2025 Coverage Polygon’s new product, AggLayer, goals to repair the fragmentation that has slowed progress in property. Afra Wang meets the person making it occur. 

Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, speaks with a practiced readability that displays his background as a lawyer. Over the course of our dialog, he outlines Polygon’s technique to place itself because the connective tissue in an more and more crowded blockchain ecosystem. As competitors intensifies and market situations fluctuate, Polygon is betting on a brand new product known as AggLayer to unify the fragmented world of blockchain – a imaginative and prescient that is formidable, although not with out its challenges.

Boiron’s path to blockchain management adopted an unconventional route by means of authorized corridors. A former regulation agency companion, he served as Chief Legal Officer at dYdX earlier than becoming a member of Polygon Labs in the same capability, finally ascending to CEO. He talked about blockchain infrastructure, because the trade confronts questions of interoperability, scalability, and sensible utility.

Boiron is a speaker at this yr’s Consensus competition in Toronto May 14-16.

CoinDesk: Your background is primarily in regulation reasonably than know-how. Tell me about it?

Boiron: I’m the CEO at Polygon Labs. I’ve been the CEO for about two years now. Before that, I used to be the Chief Legal Officer at Polygon Labs for a couple of yr. I joined Polygon after having been the Chief Legal Officer at 0x for some time. I used to be frankly simply actually enthusiastic about becoming a member of a crew that was trying to scale Web3 in the best way that Polygon is.

Before being on the Polygon authorized crew, I used to be a companion at varied massive regulation corporations within the U.S., advising on crypto since 2017.

CoinDesk: Polygon describes itself as constructing an ‘Internet of Value.’ That’s a compelling phrase, however what does it really imply in concrete phrases?

Boiron: From Polygon’s perspective, we’re attempting to construct a trustless web that makes it simply accessible to anybody to do no matter they need every time they need with their property. The approach that reveals up is thru a product that we’re growing known as the AggLayer. The AggLayer is meant to be a type of settlement for each chain throughout crypto basically.

The Internet of Value contrasts with at the moment’s web, which is primarily the Internet of Information. Web3’s basic innovation is bringing precise worth on-chain. The problem we face is the right way to scale this functionality throughout the complete digital ecosystem

Right now the reply is many various blockchains that exist. But for those who really need to have one thing that feels just like the web of knowledge turning into the web of worth, you want one thing that brings collectively all of these chains to be able to get a large quantity of transactions occurring throughout all of those chains, however in a seamless approach that feels identical to the present web. So the Internet of Value actually will get delivered to life by means of AggLayer.

CoinDesk: Interoperability has been promised by many tasks over time. What technical strategy is Polygon taking with AggLayer that you just imagine will succeed the place others have struggled?

Boiron: AggLayer is a product designed to unite all of Web3 on a single settlement layer. Currently, what’s lacking within the ecosystem is a safe method to transfer between totally different chains.

The solely efficient answer for safe and speedy cross-chain motion is to make use of a settlement layer like AggLayer. In observe, this implies the flexibility to finalize transactions between two totally different chains in lower than two seconds.

Our mannequin differs from different cross-chain infrastructure in the way it handles asset transfers. We monitor all property shifting out and in of chains. When somebody initiates an asset switch out of a sequence, we use pessimistic proof to confirm and make sure the property’ existence on that chain earlier than permitting the switch.

Currently, this method works completely with Polygon CDK chains. However, we’re launching an replace quickly that can enable any EVM chain to connect with AggLayer. This growth brings us nearer to our imaginative and prescient of unifying all of Web3 by means of AggLayer.

CoinDesk: Real-World Assets on blockchain have been mentioned for years with restricted sensible implementation. What’s your perspective on RWAs, and the way do they match into Polygon’s general strategy to the market?

Boiron: One of Polygon’s core strengths has at all times been {our relationships} with monetary establishments, which is essential for each real-world property (RWA) and funds.

When it involves funds, Polygon POS hosts almost 50 stablecoins. Every main fintech participant that operates on different chains can be on Polygon, although many Polygon-based corporations function completely on our platform.

For occasion, Lemon Cash in Argentina operates completely on our platform. Other main fee corporations like Stripe course of most of their quantity by means of Polygon POS, whereas corporations like Grab in Singapore use Polygon POS alongside different chains.

We’ve established 18 tokenized funds on Polygon POS, and our technique focuses on making these property actually useful. Currently, most tokenized property throughout chains stay dormant after creation, providing little benefit over their conventional counterparts.

Our focus is integrating these property into DeFi, beginning with enabling them as collateral in lending swimming pools for borrowing functions.

CoinDesk: How is Polygon responding to latest market volatility and regulatory developments?

Boiron: From our perspective, we simply preserve constructing no matter what the atmosphere is. We know what it’s that we need to construct, and we simply preserve constructing away at it.

The market reactions clearly affect adoption. Ultimately, the economic system finally ends up impacting the adoption for the whole lot on the earth, and it is no totally different for crypto. The solely factor that we are able to do is preserve constructing away, and because the market turns, being very well-positioned with nice merchandise that customers need to use.

CoinDesk: Several new blockchains have launched with claims of superior efficiency metrics. How does Polygon place its unique POS chain on this more and more aggressive panorama?

Boiron: I believe Polygon POS is already very well-positioned for that. There’s a motive why we see funds being adopted on POS — it’s as a result of it’s really already quick and low-cost.

The factor with the whole lot that we construct, together with Polygon POS, is that we’re persevering with to adapt it. One of the issues that is thrilling is that we get to see improvements throughout the house. People get to see how Polygon POS is innovated and undertake a few of these issues. We get to have a look at what others are doing and undertake a few of their concepts in addition to persevering with to analysis and usher in new concepts ourselves.

So I believe what you will find yourself seeing on POS is a sequence that is simply as quick or sooner than the entire new chains that we’re speaking about right here. The good factor is that comes together with years of excellent safety and nonetheless sustaining the low prices that at present exist on-chain.

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