Polygon’s co-founder is now also the company’s chief business officer.Sandeep Nailwal, an original founder of what was in 2017 called the MATIC network, has been executive chairman of Polygon Labs, and will continue to be. But under a new expanded role, Nailwal is set to focus more on Polygon’s zero-knowledge solutions, like Polygon CDK — an open-source software toolkit for developers to create layer-2s on Ethereum.“Polygon Labs is in the midst of building incredible, transformational technology that will provide developers and enterprises with countless opportunities to scale quickly and securely while having access to liquidity,” Nailwal said in a statement.Read more: Polygon zkEVM prover reaches Type 1 statusBeyond the additional responsibilities for Nailwal, two crypto-focused companies fresh off of fundraises have also named new leaders.Tokenized asset platform Centrifuge added a chief operating officer and a head of product as the on-chain asset management space gains momentum.Centrifuge’s new COO, Julia Merkey, was previously the chief financial officer at venture capital firm BlueYard Capital.The company has also tapped Sonam Joshi — a former pro at UBS, Google and Amazon — to lead its product unit. Joshi was also previously a director of product at Abra.Centrifuge facilitates pools of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), including assets like loans, credit and real estate. Centrifuge has roughly $280 million worth of assets in its liquidity pools.“They join at a perfect time as Centrifuge looks to scale to meet the widespread, increasing demand for tokenized real-world assets,” Centrifuge co-founder Lucas Vogelsang said in a statement. Read more: Anchorage, Arca Labs link up in bid to advance tokenization adoptionThe hires come after Centrifuge raised $15 million in April as part of a funding round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield.Also raising money in April was Movement Labs. PolyChain Capital led the blockchain company’s $38 million Series A round. Now, Movement Labs welcomes Franck Cassez as its head of research. A former researcher at Consensys and a blockchain research lead at Windranger Labs, Cassez looks to help the startup bring Facebook’s Move Virtual Machine to Ethereum. Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.
