Indian blockchain technology start-up Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Nailwal aims to get Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s support for his cryptocurrency platform after bagging a "sizeable" investment from US billionaire Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban, a US billionaire entrepreneur, has invested an undisclosed amount in Nailwal’s blockchain technology start-up Polygon.

Elon Musk, among others, uses applications with the Polygon chain in the background. “We sure want to get closer to him (Elon Musk). We would definitely want to get in touch with others as well. Therefore, we will find the best way to contact them,” Sandeep told The Financial Express.

Elon Musk recently revealed that Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin early this year, after which the price of the largest cryptocurrency surged to $65,000. A few weeks ago, a tweet announcing that Tesla won’t accept Bitcoins as payments brought down its price to around $35,000.

Elon Musk is a known backer of cryptocurrencies, specifically Dogecoin, and has often been accused of manipulating prices in the crypto market with his tweets.

Mark Cuban has already invested in 10 projects in the last year in the blockchain technology field, including Injective Protocol, CryptoSlam, among others. Nailwal now wants to write to Elon Musk and other crypto backers for his upcoming projects.

Polygon describes itself as the “Ethereum’s internet of blockchains,” known as “sidechains” which transforms Ethereum into a full-fledged multi-chain system and is more secure and powerful in terms of the architecture it supports.

The investment from Mark Cuban came through after he was noticed talking about Polygon in social media, wherein he appreciated the applications which were built on Polygon. Incidentally, Jack Dorsey, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk and many others use applications which have the Polygon Chain in the background.

As per CoinMarketCap, Polygon, launched in June last year, is the 12th largest token with a market cap of nearly $14 billion. Its solutions are adopted in over 250 decentralised apps, add up to around seven million transactions, and have around 790,000 users. Polygon has added 75,000 members in just a week and generated nearly $1 billion in volume.

First Published:May 27, 2021 5:57 PM IST