Polygon Bought Companies for $250M, Then Laid Off 30%. Something Changed

Polygon’s 30% layoffs alongside $250M in acquisitions signal a strategic retreat from the L2 arms race and a pivot into regulated stablecoin payments. It’s a high-risk bet to trade protocol mindshare for real revenue while TradFi is already moving in.

News broke today that Polygon has laid off roughly 30% of its workforce. While there was no official press release, CEO Marc Boiron confirmed the cuts in an interview, explaining that overall headcount would remain stable thanks to teams joining from recent acquisitions. Former employees have since confirmed the layoffs on social media.

Yet in that same week, Polygon announced $250 million in acquisitions. Firing staff while dropping a quarter-billion dollars seems contradictory. If this were a straightforward downsizing, they wouldn't be spending $250 million. If it were expansion, they wouldn't be cutting 30% of their team.

Taken together, it looks like a strategic reset. Clearing out legacy teams to make room for new talent aligned with a new direction.

$250 Million for Licenses and Payment Infrastructure

The two acquired companies are Coinme and Sequence.

Coinme, founded 2014, specializes in fiat-to-crypto exchange and operates crypto ATMs in over 50,000 US retail locations. Its crown jewel? 48 state Money Transmitter Licenses (MTLs). These are notoriously hard to obtain in the US—giants like PayPal and Stripe spent years acquiring theirs.

Sequence focuses on wallet infrastructure and cross-chain routing. It streamlines the user experience by handling bridging and gas fees behind the scenes, enabling one-click cross-chain transfers. Clients include Immutable, Arbitrum, and Polygon itself.

Polygon has branded this combined offering the "Open Money Stack," a middleware for stablecoin payments targeting B2B clients like banks, payment processors, and remittance firms.

So, Coinme provides the compliant fiat on- and off-ramp; Sequence delivers the user-friendly wallet and cross-chain infrastructure; and Polygon's chain handles settlement. Together, they form a complete stablecoin payment stack.

But why is Polygon pivoting to this now?

The L2 War: A Losing Battle for Polygon

The reality in 2025 is stark: Base has won.

Coinbase's Layer 2 grew from $3.1 billion to $5.6 billion in TVL over the past year, capturing 50% of the L2 market. Arbitrum held 30% but stagnated. Meanwhile, dozens of other L2s became ghost towns once airdrops ended.

Why did Base win?

Distribution. Coinbase has over 100 million users. When they integrate a product, adoption is instant. Take the lending protocol Morpho: its deposits on Base jumped from $354 million to $2 billion simply because it was integrated into the Coinbase app. Users didn't need to understand "L2" or "Morpho," they just clicked a button.

Polygon doesn't have that funnel. It already cut 20% of staff in 2024 during the broader bear market. This new round of layoffs executed while the company still has plenty of capital, is a deliberate strategic shift.

Four years ago, Polygon's narrative was enterprise adoption: Disney, Starbucks, Instagram, Reddit. Today, most of those partnerships have gone quiet. Starbucks even shut down its "Odyssey" program last year.

Polygon has realized it can't beat Base in a head-to-head L2 fight. It can match the technology, but it can't match the user access. Rather than fight a war it's losing, it's pivoting to a new battlefield.

Stablecoin Payments: High Growth, High Competition

Stablecoin payments are booming. In 2025, the total stablecoin market cap surpassed $300 billion (up 45%), evolving from exchange arbitrage tools into vehicles for cross-border payments, corporate treasury, and payroll.

But the market is incredibly crowded:

• Stripe: Acquired stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion

• PayPal: Its PYUSD token has captured 7% of the stablecoin market on Solana

• Circle: Is pushing its own Payments Network

• Major banks: JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are forming alliances to issue their own stablecoins

Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal told Fortune this acquisition puts Polygon in competition with Stripe. That's a bold claim. Stripe spent $1.1 billion; Polygon spent $250 million. Stripe serves millions of merchants; Polygon serves developers. More importantly, Stripe has spent a decade building banking relationships and regulatory trust. They're not in the same weight class.

Polygon may be betting on a philosophical difference. Stripe wants vertical integration, to keep merchants in the Stripe ecosystem, just swap out the settlement layer for stablecoins to improve efficiency. Polygon wants a horizontal platform, to build open infrastructure that any bank or fintech can build on top of.

They may not be direct competitors, but they're fighting for the same client attention.

A Risk-Laden Pivot

Layoffs in crypto are common. OpenSea, ConsenSys, Yuga Labs have all downsized, but that usually because companies are running out of money. Polygon is different: it has cash but is essentially performing a "corporate transplant." The risks are significant.

Coinme, the core of this acquisition, comes with baggage. Last year, California regulators fined Coinme $300,000 for allowing excessive user withdrawals. Washington state banned them entirely until December. While Polygon's CEO claims compliance is now "above requirements," regulatory records are permanent.

Previously, $POL's value was tied to chain usage. Now the narrative shifts to revenue. Coinme generates actual cash flow through transaction fees (projected at over $100M annually). If successful, Polygon transitions from a "protocol" to a "company" with revenue, profit, and a real valuation anchor, a rarity in crypto.

The Timing Problem

Traditional finance is entering crypto faster than ever, narrowing the window for crypto-native companies. There's an old industry saying: "Build in the bear, harvest in the bull."

Polygon's problem? It's still rebuilding its foundation. By the time construction is done, someone else may have already harvested the bull market.

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