Key Takeaways
- Anurag Arjun co-founded Polygon, making Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper, helping it scale for more users and developers.
- He began his career at Cognizant, gaining software development experience in healthcare and consulting.
- He founded Avail to improve blockchain data handling, making it more scalable, efficient, and reliable for developers.
Who Is Anurag Arjun?
Anurag Arjun is a Co-Founder of Polygon, a well-known Ethereum scaling platform. Alongside Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Mihailo Bjelic, he played a key role in shaping the project’s success until he stepped down from Polygon Labs in March 2023 to focus on Avail. Arjun earned his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from Nirma Institute of Technology in 2006. Moreover, he achieved an impressive 99.6th percentile score on the Common Admission Test (CAT) for the Indian Institutes of Management.
Early Career at Cognizant
Arjun started his professional career in 2006 as a Programmer Analyst at Cognizant. In this role, he gained practical experience in software development and consulting. He worked in the Life Sciences Solutions and Consulting Group at the company’s Pune, India office, focusing on projects that used technology to improve the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. This position helped him build a solid technical foundation and gave him valuable knowledge of how technology can be used to solve real-world business problems.
Product Management at Dexter Consultancy
In 2008, Arjun took on a Product Manager role at Dexter Consultancy, focusing on developing new products and creating strategies for their success. This position allowed him to explore how technology could make healthcare services more efficient and improve how medical professionals manage their work.
Healthcare Technology Solutions
Over the next five years, Arjun played an important role in designing and launching two healthcare technology products. HealthTrac was a remote health monitoring system that used third-party wearable devices to track and analyze important health data. HealthOne was a free, cloud-based clinic management tool created to help doctors organize their administrative tasks more easily. Through these projects, Arjun identified gaps in the market and developed solutions that solved important challenges in the healthcare industry.
Project Management at SNL Financial
After working for five years at Dexter Consultancy, Arjun moved into a project management role at SNL Financial in 2013. At SNL, he handled large projects related to financial data and analytics. His experience at the company helped him improve his leadership skills, especially in managing teams from different departments and leading projects focused on financial products.
Leadership at IRIS Business Services
After working at SNL Financial, Arjun joined IRIS Business Services, where he was promoted to Associate Vice President of Product Management within a year. In this role, he led a team of more than 40 people from different departments, guiding them through a major update to improve the product’s design, speed, and overall quality. He also introduced new strategies that made the product work more efficiently and easier to expand.
This career phase was important because it marked his move from managing individual projects to making big decisions about product strategy and leading at a higher level within the company.
Co-Founding Polygon
In December 2017, Arjun co-founded Matic Network, which was later renamed Polygon, and took on the role of Chief Product Officer. He was responsible for planning the company’s product development, working with partner networks to integrate their systems, and leading the development team to build and improve the platform. Under his guidance, Polygon grew from just a tool to help Ethereum handle more transactions to becoming a major company providing important blockchain technology.
Founder of The Avail Project
Anurag Arjun is a co-founder of Avail and leads the project. After helping start Polygon, he created Avail to improve how blockchains handle data. Avail began inside Polygon and was spun off as an independent project in March 2023. Its mainnet and AVAIL token launched on July 23, 2024, after funding rounds totaling $75 million, including a $43 million Series A co-led by Founders Fund, Dragonfly and Cyber Fund in June 2024. Its Nexus cross-chain layer went live in November 2025. His role is to lead its growth and make sure it helps new blockchain projects work better by providing a strong and reliable way to store and share data.
Polygon’s Growth in the Blockchain Industry
Polygon has become a well-known name in the blockchain space by helping Ethereum handle transactions more quickly and at a lower cost. Its Layer 2 solution makes transactions smoother and more affordable, encouraging many developers to build on its network.
Besides attracting more developers, Polygon has also seen a huge increase in user activity. The platform recorded 867.7 million monthly Super User transactions and added 1.5 million new Super Users. These numbers show how widely Polygon is being used and its importance in solving blockchain challenges like slow speeds and high costs.
Polygon’s CDK
In an episode of the Crypto Daily YouTube Channel, Polygon introduced the Chain Development Kit (CDK), a new tool that helps developers build their own blockchains using zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. These blockchains will be linked through a special ZK-powered bridge, allowing them to work together easily.
Many developers are now using rollups to improve Ethereum, and Polygon is following this trend. They already offer tools like Supernets, but CDK is a big step forward because it uses ZK cryptography. With CDK, Polygon aims to make sending digital value as simple as sharing information online.
Polygon’s Growth in Web3
Polygon is being used for more than just decentralized finance (DeFi); it is also gaining popularity in Web3. Big companies and institutions have started using its technology, making blockchain more mainstream. Meta (formerly Facebook) added Polygon for NFT projects before ending its NFT features in 2023, Reddit used it to launch its NFT avatar marketplace, and Stripe chose it for crypto payments. These partnerships show how Polygon is helping businesses use blockchain simply and effectively.
Polygon’s Role in DeFi and NFTs
Polygon is widely used in decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs due to its low costs and fast transactions. Platforms like Aave and Curve Finance rely on it for better efficiency, while many Web3 games and NFT marketplaces use it for affordable operations. Even financial institutions are exploring blockchain for digital assets. Polygon remains a key player in digital finance and online applications as its ecosystem grows.
Arjun’s Impact on Blockchain
Arjun’s journey from software development to leading a major blockchain project shows his ability to adapt, create, and lead in a changing industry. His work with Polygon has helped Ethereum handle more transactions, brought blockchain to a wider audience, and improved Layer 2 technology with ZK-rollups. By connecting blockchain to real-world use, he continues to shape its future.
Anurag Arjun’s Part in Scaling Ethereum
Arjun helped improve Ethereum with Polygon, making it faster and cheaper. His journey from software development to co-founding Polygon shows his ability to create and lead. As Polygon grows in DeFi, Web3, and business use, it shapes blockchain’s future.
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