Reviewing Polygon Co-founder Sandeep's 18 Project Portfolio: Keen on Seed-Round Investments, Many Tied to Polygon's Ecosystem
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Reviewing Polygon Co-founder Sandeep's 18 Project Portfolio: Keen on Seed-Round Investments, Many Tied to Polygon's Ecosystem
Sandeep has invested in approximately 124 crypto projects to date, and this year announced participation in building/investing in 18 crypto projects.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Nancy, PANews
Recently, the AI project Sentient has sparked market controversy by securing substantial funding solely based on its vision of open-source AI, despite not having launched any tangible product yet. This has also drawn public attention to one of its key builders, Sandeep Nailwal.
Sandeep is co-founder and Executive Chair of Polygon Labs, and in late May announced he would also take on the role of Chief Business Officer, overseeing strategies related to solutions developed by Polygon. He is also an active angel investor.
According to data from RootData, a Web3 asset analytics platform, Sandeep has invested in approximately 124 crypto projects to date. In terms of project types, his investments favor infrastructure, DeFi, CeFi, Layer 1, and AI sectors. Regarding funding stages, disclosed seed and Series A rounds account for as high as 67.4%, with valuations typically ranging from several million to tens of millions of dollars. In terms of operational status, 91.9% of these projects have launched mainnets, while seven have ceased operations.
This year, Sandeep has publicly participated in building or investing in 18 crypto projects. According to PANews analysis, these are primarily focused on AI, ZK, DID, DEX, and infrastructure sectors, with AI projects accounting for over one-fifth. In terms of number of participating institutions, the average is 18.9 investors per project, with a maximum of 38. Polychain Capital, HashKey Capital, Sreeram Kannan, Animoca Brands, and OKX Ventures frequently appear as co-investors. Regarding investment rounds, nine of these projects raised funds primarily at the seed stage, with several already achieving high valuations during this early phase—seed rounds reaching up to $85 million, and disclosed valuations as high as $400 million. Additionally, many of these projects are either part of the Polygon ecosystem or maintain close collaborations with it.
AI
Sentient
Open-source AI platform Sentient aims to build open AI models through community contributions, addressing centralization and ethical concerns in today’s AI landscape. Sentient plans to be built on Polygon or potentially launch its own chain using Polygon’s Chain Development Kit (CDK). One of Sentient's core contributors is Sandeep Nailwal, while Sreeram Kannan, founder and CEO of EigenLayer, serves as advisor.
In its recently announced $85 million seed round, Sentient was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with 26 institutional and individual investors including Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, Canonical Crypto, and Foresight Ventures.
Notably, Sentient was founded by Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Symbolic Capital and former vice president of Huobi Global, who also serves as an advisor to Polygon Labs. In May, Kenzi Wang, along with Sandeep and other senior Polygon executives, was alleged to have orchestrated a MEME coin scam, though Sandeep has not responded to these allegations.
Prodia
Prodia is a distributed GPU network for AI inference solutions, aiming to deliver more efficient and cost-effective cloud computing services leveraging Web3 infrastructure. Most of Prodia’s core team comes from storage project Storj, including founder Monty Anderson, formerly R&D lead at Storj Labs; CEO Shawn Wilkinson, founder and CSO of Storj; and chief engineer Monty Anderson, previously senior software engineer and R&D lead at Storj.
In July, Prodia announced a $15 million seed round from 13 investors, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from HashKey Capital, Web3.com, Index Ventures, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, and angel investors Balaji Srinivasan, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and Bloq co-founder Matthew Roszak.
OpenLedger
OpenLedger focuses on building permissionless, data-driven infrastructure for AI development. This month, OpenLedger raised $8 million in a seed round from 19 investors, led by Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital, with participation from HashKey Capital, Finality Capital, Hash3, STIX, MH Ventures, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, Sandeep Nailwal, and Manta Network co-founder Kenny Li.
Sahara
Sahara is a trustless, permissionless, privacy-centric decentralized AI network that enables individuals and enterprises to create customized autonomous knowledge agents (Sahara KAs). In March, Sahara announced a $6 million seed round led by Polychain Capital, with 14 investors including Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, dao5, Geekcartel, and Sandeep Nailwal.
ZK
Lumoz
Lumoz (formerly Opside) is a decentralized ZK-RaaS platform aiming to improve the efficiency of zero-knowledge computation and provide users with a global, open, and fair computing environment. It is officially certified by Polygon as a CDK technology provider.
In April, Lumoz completed a $6 million token sale at a $120 million valuation, with seven participating investors including OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Kronos Ventures, Kernel Ventures, and Sandeep Nailwal.
Succinct Labs
Succinct Labs is a zero-knowledge proof infrastructure provider dedicated to lowering the technical barrier so all developers can access ZK technology and accelerate its adoption. In March, Succinct Labs announced it raised $55 million across seed and Series A rounds from 16 investors, led by Paradigm, with participation from Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Geometry, ZK Validator, Sandeep Nailwal, and Sreeram Kannan.
DID
Privado ID
Privado ID (formerly known as Polygon ID) is a digital identity solution spun out from Polygon Labs, designed to give individuals control over their personal data. The team includes Polygon co-founders David Schwartz and Antoni Martin serving as CEO and COO respectively, Jordi Baylina—the key developer behind Polygon zkEVM—as technical advisor, and Sandeep Nailwal as growth advisor.
Humanity Protocol
Humanity Protocol is a DID protocol built on Polygon CDK, leveraging palm-vein recognition and zero-knowledge proofs to ensure user privacy and security, aiming to offer an accessible and non-intrusive method of human verification for Web3 applications. At the end of February, Humanity Protocol announced strategic investments from 23 investors, including Hashed, CMCC, Cypher Capital, Foresight Ventures, Animoca Brands founder Yat Siu, and Sandeep Nailwal.
DEX
Ooga Booga
Ooga Booga is a liquidity aggregator within the Berachain ecosystem, aiming to support Berachain’s goal of becoming the most capital-efficient blockchain. It raised $1 million in a seed round at a $10 million valuation from 28 investors, including Cypher Capital, CitizenX, Rubik, Rana, and Sandeep Nailwal.
Dolomite
Dolomite is a decentralized trading protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem, which secured $900,000 in strategic funding from 14 investors, including Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, and DCF GOD.
Others
Mystiko Network
Mystiko Network is a Web3 infrastructure layer, offering Mystiko SDK—a universal ZK SDK that provides scalability, interoperability, privacy, and AI capabilities for every blockchain and dApp.
At the end of March, Mystiko.Network announced a $18 million seed round at a $400 million valuation from 11 investors, led by Sequoia Capital India/SEA (Peak XV Partners), with participation from Samsung Next, Hashkey Capital, Mirana, Signum, Coinlist, and Sandeep Nailwal.
GAM3S.GG
GAM3S.GG is a Web3 gaming information platform aiming to onboard gamers into Web3 through game discovery, content, live streaming, and community events. In its strategic funding round announced in March, GAM3S.GG raised $2 million from 31 investors including Sandeep Nailwal, YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon, and Sky Mavis & Ronin co-founder Jiho Zirlin.
Solayer
Solayer is a restaking protocol in the Solana ecosystem, aiming to leverage economic security and high-quality execution to become decentralized cloud infrastructure, enabling application developers to achieve higher levels of consensus and customizable blockspace. This month, Solayer announced completion of its Builders Round, with 20 participants including Anatoly Yakovenko (co-founder of Solana Labs), Michael Repetny (core contributor at Marinade), Rooter (founder of Solend), Richard Wu (co-founder of Tensor), and Sandeep Nailwal. While Solayer did not disclose the funding amount, it previously stated intentions to raise $8 million at an $80 million valuation in a seed round led by Hack VC.
Gamic
Gamic is a Web3 community application aiming to provide a new interactive platform for the Web3 space. Incubated by Binance Labs and supported by Fundamental Labs, Gamic announced in May it had successfully raised $1.8 million across multiple funding rounds, with nine investors including Polygon Ventures, Gate.io, Mapleblock, Mulana, Double Peak Group, and Sandeep Nailwal.
Ava Protocol
Ava Protocol is an intent-based EigenLayer AVS that enables private, autonomous transactions seamlessly supporting various use cases such as DeFi, NFTs, and gaming. In June, Ava Protocol announced $5.5 million in initial investment and an additional $4.5 million in seed funding, with 13 investors including Electric Capital, Taisu Ventures, and Sandeep Nailwal.
Lava Foundation
Lava Foundation is a newly established nonprofit organization dedicated to developing Lava, a modular blockchain network focused on providing data access services via remote procedure calls (RPC). In early May, Lava Foundation announced it successfully raised $11 million in token funding from seven investors, including Animoca Brands, Gate.io Ventures, CoinGecko Ventures, and Sandeep Nailwal.
Layer3
Layer3 is a token distribution protocol that enables protocols to allocate tokens more effectively by unifying user activities across multiple blockchains and applications. Currently, the project is developing a new AI protocol to optimize token distribution strategies, expected to launch later this year.
Layer3 has completed multiple funding rounds, including a $15 million Series A round in June from 38 investors, co-led by ParaFi and Greenfield Capital, as well as earlier participation from Sandeep Nailwal, Electric, and others in 2022.
Beacon
Beacon is a Web3 startup accelerator founded by Sandeep Nailwal, which announced in February that it had raised over $150 million in funding over the past year.
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