Jaynti Kanani is an experienced blockchain engineer best known for his role as the co-founder of Polygon (formerly known as Matic Network) - a multi-chain scaling solution for Ethereum.^{[1] [9]} In October 2023, Jaynti Kanani stepped down from his leadership position at Polygon.

Early Life & Education

Kanani was born in an Indian city near Ahmedabad. Due to financial difficulties, his father, who worked at a diamond company, had to borrow money to pay for his son’s education. At Dharmsinh Desai University, the entrepreneur studied Information Technology and in 2011, he graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology. Kanani began working as soon as he graduated since he recognized his family's dire financial circumstances. His objective was to settle his father's debt for his sister's wedding and his schooling.^[2]

His hobbies include watching movies, TV series, and anime.^[11]

Career

Kanani began his career in 2011 with Persistent Systems as a Senior Software Engineer. He simultaneously worked on a number of side ventures and joined Sumit Maniyar's business, which ultimately founded the Indian finance firm Rupeek. He became a Data Scientist for Housing.com, a real estate startup in India, in December 2014.^[10]

Kanani discovered Bitcoin and the potential it provided while working at Persistent. Kanani sought to create a few apps for a universal payment system, such as the Game of Thrones prediction market. Additionally, he freelanced, earned some money from cryptocurrencies, and in 2017 he co-founded Matic Network (now Polygon).

After working on a side project about microtransactions at a time when no global solutions existed, Kanani came across Ethereum. He noticed the need for scalability and started researching to find scaling solutions.^[10]

So, Matic network started as a pure research effort back in Nov 2017 when I started looking to find scaling solutions for end-user products. Plasma was an obvious choice. I started contributing prolifically to Plasma, with Matic Network being one of the first implementations of Plasma MVP. Soon we realized that all the proposed plasma implementations had usability as well as scaling issues.

After hearing about his idea, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun joined the team, and they started working on it in early 2018.^[3][4]

The concept behind Polygon is to provide scaling solutions for the Ethereum network to enable users to participate efficiently and at a lower cost.

Even if you provide a skill but if it fails once in a while or it's not user friendly then there is no point. That's how the core goal of Matic was to kind of creating a very developer friendly scaling solutions for Ethereum.

In May 2021, Mark Cuban, a US-based internet billionaire invested in Matic Network, which has since changed its name to Polygon. The startup's cryptocurrency, MATIC token, also made it into the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world in terms of market valuation, making its co-founders the first cryptocurrency millionaires in India. ^[8] As of December 2021, there were over 7,000 decentralized applications (dApps) running on Polygon. ^[9]

Based on the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus, Polygon also has an environmental benefit for Ethereum. PoS mining is regarded as green because it doesn't use a lot of hash power. In the end, the agreement contributes to a 99% reduction in energy use. As a result, consensus-based blockchains continue to be environmentally friendly. ^[9]

Stepping Down

On October 4, 2023, Jaynti Kanani announced his plans in a post on X (formerly Twitter) saying he "decided to step back" from his leadership role about six months ago and that he would be "focusing on new adventures while still cheering and contributing to Polygon from the sidelines." ^[13][14]

"After kickstarting Polygon in 2017, around 6 months back, I decided to step back from the day-to-day grind. I'm more confident in Polygon's bright future and passionate community. I'll be focusing on new adventures while still cheering and contributing to Polygon from the sidelines.
Bullish on Polygon 2.0!" - Jaynti Kanani ^[13]

His Polygon co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal responded to the X post by saying:

"Man this makes me emotional. What a ride we've had together brother. But its just the start for Polygon, i wish we could've done more for longer together in this crazy journey that is Polygon. But hey, you got to do what you got to do. "^[13]

Investments

Kanani has made around 27 investments, some of which include Nxyz, Juno, BuidlersTribe, Interality, Crypso, MoHash, NFTPort, Nume Crypto, Liminal, and Plutoverse.^[12]

Morphic Studio Launch

On July 16, 2024, Jaynti Kanani introduced Morphic Studio, an AI-powered platform to create controlled videos. ^[16]

Our focus is providing animators and filmmakers with a seamless UX that adapts to their unique style, providing unparalleled control and consistency throughout their creative workflow. - the team tweeted^[15]

Kanani also emphasized Morphic Studio as a tool for storytelling:

Control and consistency are essential for storytelling. With Morphic Studio, our goal is to provide utmost control over video creation, starting with animation.
When you watch — David Fincher, Park Chan-Wook, Hayao Miyazaki, Hajime Isayama, or Makoto Shinkai — you feel their unique vision. This requires dedication, fine-tuned control, and many factors like emotions, compositions, sound, and more. All coming to Morphic Studio. ^[17]