- Former Polygon Labs president Ryan Wyatt has joined rival Ethereum scaling platform Optimism
- The move comes four months after leaving Polygon
- Optimism said he’ll be its Chief Growth Officer
Former Polygon president Ryan Wyatt has joined Optimism, four months after leaving Polygon, where he served for nearly two years. Wyatt joined Optimism as its Chief Growth Officer (CGO) responsible for bringing more users and developer activities on the Ethereum scaling layer. The Optimism CGO said that the Optimism team is superior, a sentiment that’s likely to fuel the rivalry between the two platforms in their quest to lead the Ethereum layer two race.
The Job is Simple
In an X (formerly Twitter) post, Wyatt said that his “job is simple: grow the OP ecosystem by supporting developers of all sizes.” Wyatt believes that the Optimism team is the “best” across the crypto landscape, a comment that may be part of his efforts to bring new users to the platform.
Let’s keep it short & sweet
My next chapter begins today as Chief Growth Officer
contributing to the Optimism Collective!My job is simple: grow the OP ecosystem by supporting developers of all sizes!
OP Builders,
We’re gonna make history together!With Optimism,
Me✨🔴_🔴✨ pic.twitter.com/Asng5TjP9e— Ryan Wyatt (@Fwiz) November 13, 2023
The former Polygon executive praised Optimism for making big strides in less than a year in both the technical and adoption aspects. He added that his expertise will help the layer two protocol in its “non-technical efforts.”
According to Optimism co-founder Jing Wang, Wyatt can boost the protocol’s adoption by 100 times. Being from a gaming background, Wyatt intends to bring more gaming action on Optimism, a mission supported by Wang.
Focused on Leading Ethereum Scaling Race
Wyatt’s move comes when Polygon and Optimism are improving their protocols with each targeting to become the go-to Ethereum scaling layer. Polygon, for example, is overhauling its network to usher in Polygon 2.0 in a quest to become the value layer of the internet.
Optimism, on the other hand, is improving its OP Stack to make it more appealing to developers. The protocol boasts of the popular Coinbase-backed platform Base network that’s home to Friend.tech.
With Wyatt joining Optimism, it’s to be seen whether he’ll help create a clear adoption difference between the two platforms.
