CoinGecko Virtual Meetup Featured Guest: Sandeep Nailwal (Co-founder & COO of Matic Network)

CoinGecko will be hosting our Virtual Meetup #3 this coming Wednesday, June 10 @ 10AM EST.  Held monthly, CoinGecko Virtual Meetup is our live online community event where we explore different key topics in the crypto sphere and invite industry leaders to share their two satoshis.

This month, we will be exploring developments in blockchain games and one of our featured guests is Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Matic Network. Matic Network brings massive scale to Ethereum using an adapted version of Plasma framework that provides a solution for faster and extremely low-cost transactions with finality on the main chain.  Their objective is to simplify the interaction between users and the decentralized world.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself

My name is Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder & COO of Matic Network. I have been involved with many tech businesses since very early days. Scaling is my key focus, be it in businesses or blockchains, but I am an all-round business buff. I had my ‘lightbulb moment’ about the revolutionary nature of blockchain in 2017, found my calling in the scalability arena and co-founded Matic Network alongside Jaynti Kanani and Anurag Arjun.

As COO of Matic Network, I am based out of India with our tech teams. My main responsibilities include spearheading the branding, marketing, adoption and operations at Matic, and partnering with key stakeholders to push forward the vision of Matic Network.

2. What was the idea behind your company?

Matic Network is a Layer 2 scaling solution that aims to provide a generalized Layer 2 platform, enabling Ethereum developers to scale their DApps for large-scale usage. For the initial phase, Matic has launched its hybrid PoS+Plasma sidechains on top of Ethereum which is already gaining huge traction – making Matic one of the fastest growing DApp platforms in the space.

Essentially, we are providing the infrastructure to overcome the traditional performance bottlenecks of the blockchain ecosystem, to allow DApps to be able to handle large volumes of users.

3. What project(s) are you up to lately?

Network development has been our key focus area recently, as has adoption, as always. Following our mainnet rollout strategy, the Matic mainnet officially went live at the end of May, and staking preparations are underway. In May alone we announced several new network validators, including NYSE listed $40bn Indian tech icon Infosys, and announced 6 new projects joining our growing ecosystem of 50+ DApps. 

The mainnet launch signals the beginning of the next exciting chapter for Matic Network, and things are heating up on all fronts.

4. What is one thing you think needs to happen for mass adoption of blockchain games?

On a technical level, there have been many hindrances to creating attractive blockchain-powered games for the mainstream. Currently, blockchain game developers struggle with slow transaction times and high transaction fees, thus leading to poor user experience. This has led to Dapps which are slow, unintuitive and uninteresting, unable to handle complex gameplay. Such games are not attractive to mainstream users who are used to a streamlined, intuitive gaming experience - which has resulted in a technical bottleneck to adoption. However, solutions such as Matic are being developed to facilitate a seamless blockchain gaming experience.

Blockchain gaming is evolving at an impressive rate and I believe gaming will be a major onboarding ramp to blockchain for the masses in the coming years, but the development of high-performance infrastructure is critical if we are to see this come to fruition.

Join us at CoinGecko Virtual Meetup this Wednesday (10 June 2020) to learn more about the future of blockchain games.