Polygon Co-Founder Leaves to Run Independent Modular Blockchain, Avail

Quick take:

• Anurag Arjun spent five years at Polygon.
• He started building Avail within the Polygon ecosystem in 2020.
• He is now leaving to run the new Layer 1 blockchain independently with Polygon focusing on Layer 2.

Anurag Arjun has spun off his Layer 1 blockchain startup, Avail from Polygon. The Polygon co-founder announced Thursday night that he is leaving the company to focus on developing his new project.

Spent five years with the Ethereum scaling protocol. But with Polygon focusing on Layer 2 solutions, he feels it’s time to take the project out of the giant web3 company ecosystem where it’s been incubated since he started building it in 2020.

“Today is a historic day in my 5+ years at Polygon,” Arjun wrote on Twitter, adding, “I am pleased to announce that Avail, a modular blockchain optimized for data availability, will be spun off and exist separately from Polygon Labs and the Polygon Foundation.” Arjun will now lead the development of Avail outside of Polygon.

Referring to the success Polygon has achieved since co-founding the company with Jaynti Kanani and Sandeep Nailwal in 2017 as Matic, through its evolution into Polygon after Mihailo Bjelic joined in 2021, Arjun said “the need for Polygon to focus on Layer 2 solutions and streamlining their efforts has become essential.”

“Available as a modular blockchain with a data availability layer is uniquely positioned to help developers overcome the challenges of monolithic blockchains, but falls outside of Polygon’s L2 solutions. Therefore, I offered to continue leading Avail as a separate, self-funded entity,” wrote he.

Arjun describes Avail as “a foundational consensus layer that allows other blockchains or applications with any execution environment to be built on top.” Just like modular layer 2 blockchains, Avail allows developers to make their applications fast, efficient and scalable, reads a blog post on the blockchain platform’s website.

It enables developers to optimize execution by ensuring that the sequence of transactions is available.

“Its strength lies in a peer-to-peer network of light clients, potentially in the tens of thousands to millions, that perform DAS to ensure that the data is available. In other words, Avail decouples the data availability layer, making it easier for chain developers to focus on execution and settlement,” Arjun wrote in the blog post published on Wednesday.

According to Arjun, the platform leverages supreme roll-ups powered by zero-knowledge cryptography, supreme chains, validiums and optimistic chains, among others.

The platform also allows developers to build their apps however they want, which Arjun says is a key advantage compared to other scaling blockchains.

Avail is also protocol agnostic, meaning it can be adapted to different web3 protocols. It is open source, making it available to all developers, and will also have a community management mechanism.

The project has already been launched in the testnet with a roadmap and future plans that will soon be revealed.

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