Just spent 250 million to buy a company, then laid off 30%. Polygon has found a new way to survive.

Written by: David, Deep Tide TechFlow

Today I saw a piece of news: Polygon laid off approximately 30% of its staff.

Although Polygon has not issued an official announcement, CEO Marc Boiron acknowledged the layoffs in an interview, stating that the total number of employees will remain stable due to the addition of newly acquired teams.

There are also posts from laid-off employees on social media, indirectly confirming this fact.

But in the same week, Polygon announced it would acquire two companies for $250 million. On one hand, laying off staff; on the other, spending big money on acquisitions. Isn’t that a bit strange?

If it were purely a contraction, they wouldn’t spend $250 million on acquisitions at the same time. If it were expansion, they wouldn’t cut 30% of their staff. Looking at both together, it seems more like a blood transfusion.

They are cutting staff from existing business lines to free up positions for the acquired teams.

$250 million buys licenses and payment pipelines

The two acquired companies are Coinme and Sequence.

Coinme is an established company founded in 2014, providing exchange channels between fiat and cryptocurrencies, operating crypto ATMs at over 50,000 retail locations in the US. Its most valuable asset is its licenses—holding money transfer licenses in 48 states. These are hard to obtain in the US; companies like PayPal and Stripe spent years to accumulate them.

Sequence provides wallet infrastructure and cross-chain routing. Simply put, it allows users to transfer across chains with one click without dealing with bridging or gas fees. Its clients include Polygon, Immutable, Arbitrum, and it also has distribution partnerships with Google Cloud.

The two acquisitions together cost $250 million. Polygon has branded this set of tools as the “Open Money Stack,” positioning it as middleware for stablecoin payments, targeting B2B clients like banks, payment companies, and remittance providers.

My understanding of the logic is as follows:

Coinme offers compliant fiat on/off ramps, Sequence provides user-friendly wallets and cross-chain capabilities, and Polygon’s own chain offers the settlement layer. Combining these three creates a complete infrastructure for stablecoin payments.

The question is, why does Polygon want to do this?

L2 Path, Polygon is already struggling

The situation in 2025 is clear: Base has won.

Coinbase’s L2, which launched last year with a TVL of $3.1 billion, has grown to $5.6 billion, accounting for 50% of the entire L2 sector. Arbitrum holds 30% but has seen little growth. Dozens of other L2s mostly became abandoned after airdrops.

Base’s advantage? Coinbase has over 100 million registered users; whenever a product feature launches, users come naturally.

For example, the lending protocol Morpho on Base saw deposits grow from $354 million at the start of last year to $2 billion now, mainly because it was integrated into Coinbase’s app. Users can access it directly without knowing what L2 or Morpho is.

Polygon lacks such an entry point. It also laid off staff once in 2024, cutting 20%, during the bear market when everyone was shrinking.

This time is different. They still have money but are choosing to cut, indicating a proactive shift in strategy.

I remember Polygon’s previous story was about enterprise adoption, such as collaborations with Disney accelerators, Starbucks NFT membership programs, Meta’s Instagram minting, Reddit avatars, etc.

Four years later, most of those partnerships have gone silent. Starbucks’ Odyssey program was shut down last year.

Continuing to compete head-to-head with Base in the L2 space, Polygon has little chance of winning. The technical gap can be bridged, but user entry points cannot. Instead of fighting on a battlefield they can’t win, it’s better to look for new opportunities.

Stablecoin payments are a good direction, but very crowded

Stablecoin payments are indeed a growing market.

By 2025, the total market cap of stablecoins will exceed $300 billion, a 45% increase from the previous year. Use cases are evolving from mainly arbitrage between exchanges to cross-border payments, corporate finance, payroll, and other scenarios.

But this market is already crowded.

Last year, Stripe spent $1.1 billion acquiring stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, and recently acquired the issuance rights for USDH stablecoin on Hyperliquid. PayPal’s PYUSD has already captured 7% of the stablecoin market share on Solana.

Circle is promoting its Payments Network. Major banks like JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are forming alliances to issue their own stablecoins.

Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal told Fortune that this acquisition puts Polygon in competition with Stripe.

Honestly, that sounds a bit exaggerated.

Stripe’s acquisition cost $1.1 billion; Polygon spent $250 million. Stripe has millions of merchants; Polygon’s clients are mainly developers. Most importantly, Stripe has accumulated over a decade of payment licenses and banking relationships.

In a head-to-head fight, they are not on the same level.

But Polygon might be betting on a different approach. Stripe aims to incorporate stablecoins into its closed-loop system, allowing merchants to continue using Stripe but settle with stablecoins, making transactions faster and cheaper.

Polygon wants to build open infrastructure that any bank or payment company can use to develop their own services.

One is vertical integration, the other is horizontal expansion. These two modes may not directly compete but are both vying for the same customer attention.

A different approach, uncertain future

Finally, it’s worth noting that layoffs in the crypto industry have been common in recent years.

OpenSea cut 50%, Yuga Labs and Chainalysis are also shrinking. ConsenSys laid off 20% last year and again this year. Most of these are passive contractions—running out of funds, trying to survive.

Polygon is different. It still has money and can spend $250 million on acquisitions, yet it chose to cut 30% of its staff.

A strategic shift through blood transfusion, but with risks.

The Coinme acquisition’s core business is crypto ATMs, with machines at over 50,000 retail locations across the US, allowing users to buy crypto with cash and exchange crypto for cash.

The trouble is, this business ran into issues last year.

California regulators fined Coinme $300,000 for allowing users to over-withdraw, violating the $1,000 daily limit. Washington State was even harsher, issuing a ban that was only lifted last December.

Polygon’s CEO once claimed Coinme’s compliance was “above requirements.” But regulatory penalties are black and white; pretty words can’t change that.

Mapping this back to tokens, the $POL token narrative also changes.

Before, it was about the chain being used more, increasing POL’s value. After the acquisition, Coinme earns commissions on each transaction—real revenue, not just a token story. The official estimate is over $100 million annually.

If that’s achievable, Polygon could shift from a “protocol” to a “company,” with revenue, profit, and valuation anchors. That’s a rare species in crypto.

However, the pace of traditional finance’s retreat is accelerating, shrinking the window for native crypto companies.

There’s a saying in the industry: “Bear market builds, bull market harvests.”

Polygon’s current problem is that it’s still building, but the harvesters of the bull market might no longer be it.