Global Head of Institutional Capital at Polygon — Dean Thomas —
We are excited to interview Dean Thomas on Episode 24 of our Globe Interview Series. Head of Institutional Capital at Polygon (formerly MATIC), Dean previously worked as an Investment Analyst at The Blackstone Group and as special situations private credit investor at Goldman Sachs.
When it comes to scaling, Ethereum can be problematic with its high gas fees, sometimes at the cost of hundreds if not thousands of dollars once the network is overrun with transactions. This is why Polygon or Matic was created. It allows users to access Ethereum DApps without the trouble of high gas fees and slow speeds. In this conversation, Dean Thomas speaks to us about his background, what Polygon is, the different solutions the project provides, and all of the exciting things they are working on in finance, gaming, and more.
Who is Dean Thomas?
Dean Thomas started as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs before joining Blackstone. He joined Polygon in 2021 as Global Head of Institutional Capital and has since helped the company manage finances in developing new projects while establishing partnerships with other encryption projects and companies, mainly in the NFT, Metaverse, and GameFi niche sectors. He is also the Founder — CEO/CIO at Stealth Capital, chief investment officer at Rainmaker Games, Managing Partner at Lone Palm Advisors, Strategic Investor at Bitwise Asset Management, and Senior Advisor at Bit2Me.
After several years of working in traditional banking with Goldman Sachs, Dean’s decision to cross over into the blockchain industry was based on the many opportunities he found in the space and the realization that decentralized finance offers more today and in the future than traditional banking would. “It’s one of those things that when you get a glimpse of it, it’s very hard to go backward in time,” He says about blockchain tech. Dean believes that transaction lawyers without smart contract coding skills built upon their legal skills may get left behind in the direction the world of law and transactions is heading.
As a champion of web3 and DeFi, Dean feels very proud of where he is at this point in his career. Unlike traditional financing, working in the blockchain industry has given him the ability to grow fast in a very short time. This has given Dean an ever-expanding knowledge base, consistent 24/7 financial services, testing of protocols, and now the ability to make more decisions quickly.
What is Polygon?
Polygon was founded in India in 2017 by Anurag Arjun, Janti Kanani, and Sandip Narwar. Initially called Matic network, it was renamed Polygon in February 2021, with MahaloGelek joining as its fourth co-founder. The Polygon software company in India coordinated by the Matic Foundation (a non-profit organization) established Polygon. Its mainnet was launched in June 2020.
Polygon aims to make transactions on Ethereum cheaper and faster through the use of Layer 2 sidechains or blockchains that run like speedy HOV lanes alongside Ethereum’s main chain. As a result, the decentralized Ethereum scaling platform enables developers to build scalable user-friendly dApps with low transaction fees without ever sacrificing security.
Using Polygon involves bridging crypto over to Polygon, which allows users to interact with a range of popular crypto apps once exclusive to the main Ethereum blockchain.
Users can easily deposit Ethereum tokens to a Polygon smart contract, interact with them inside Polygon, and later withdraw them back to the Ethereum main chain. Users then pay transaction fees and participate in proof-of-stake consensus using the MATIC token.
As of February 2022, over 7000+ dApps have scaled their performance using Polygon.
Polygon Scaling Solutions
Polygon offers several Ethereum-scaling solutions that meet different user needs.
Polygon PoS: EVM-compatible Ethereum sidechain, secured by a permissionless set of PoS validators.
Polygon Hermez: An open-source zk-rollup optimized for secure, low-cost, and usable token transfers on Ethereum.Polygon Edge: A modular and extensible framework for building private or public Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks Polygon Avail: A general-purpose, scalable data availability-focused blockchain targeted for standalone chains and off-chain scaling solutions. (under development)Polygon Miden: A STARK-based zk-rollup with support for arbitrary smart contracts. (under development)Polygon Zero: A highly-scalable, Ethereum-compatible zk-rollup. It uses an incredibly fast recursive proof system that is Eth-friendly. (under development)Polygon Nightfall: A one-of-a-kind corporate enterprise privacy scaling solution that uses optimistic roll-ups along with Zero-Knowledge cryptography (zk-rollup). (testnet)
Find out more about Polygon:
And connect with Dean Thomas:
https://twitter.com/lonepalmadvisor
Join us for the full interview with Dean Thomas, which airs on the 3rd of March, 2021, at 6:00 PM UTC on Youtube.
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