Mihailo Bjelic is a Serbian software engineer and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Polygon (formerly Matic Network), one of the most widely used Ethereum scaling solutions in the blockchain industry. Bjelic has played a central role in shaping Polygon’s technical direction, strategic growth, and its mission to make Web3 accessible at scale.
Few names in blockchain carry as much weight as Mihailo Bjelic. Yet, unlike many of his peers in the crypto world, Bjelic has largely let his work speak for itself—favoring technical rigor and long-term vision over the kind of social media noise that tends to dominate Web3 discourse. The result is a career defined by substance: a platform that processes millions of transactions daily, a global developer community, and a protocol that has fundamentally changed how people think about Ethereum scalability.
This post takes a deep look at who Mihailo Bjelic is, how Polygon came to be, what makes his approach to blockchain development distinctive, and why his work continues to matter as the industry evolves.
Who Is Mihailo Bjelic and Where Did He Come From?
Mihailo Bjelic was born and raised in Serbia, where he developed a strong foundation in software engineering and computer science. Before entering the blockchain space, Bjelic worked as a software developer with experience across multiple technology domains. His technical background gave him a grounded, engineering-first perspective that would later define Polygon’s product philosophy.
Bjelic was drawn to blockchain not for speculative reasons, but for the genuine technical challenge it presented. Ethereum, despite its revolutionary potential as a programmable blockchain, had a critical flaw: it couldn’t scale. Transaction speeds were slow, gas fees were volatile and often prohibitively expensive, and the network struggled under the weight of growing demand. For a software engineer like Bjelic, this wasn’t just a business problem—it was an engineering problem worth solving.
That conviction led him to co-found what would become one of the most consequential projects in the history of decentralized technology.
How Mihailo Bjelic Co-Founded Polygon and What It Started As
In 2017, Bjelic co-founded Matic Network alongside Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun. The team was based in India, and while Bjelic collaborated remotely, his technical contributions were central to the project’s early architecture. The goal was straightforward but ambitious: build a Layer 2 scaling solution that could process transactions faster and cheaper than Ethereum’s mainnet, while still inheriting Ethereum’s security guarantees.
Matic Network launched its mainnet in 2020 and quickly gained traction among developers building decentralized applications (dApps). The protocol used a combination of Plasma chains and a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to dramatically reduce transaction costs and increase throughput. Where Ethereum mainnet might charge several dollars per transaction during periods of high congestion, Matic offered near-instant finality for fractions of a cent.
The project rebranded to Polygon in February 2021—a name change that reflected a broader vision. Polygon was no longer just one scaling solution; it was becoming a full ecosystem of scaling technologies for Ethereum. The rebrand was accompanied by a surge in adoption that few could have predicted. By mid-2021, Polygon was processing more daily transactions than Ethereum itself.
What Role Does Mihailo Bjelic Play at Polygon Today?
Bjelic serves as a co-founder and has been deeply involved in Polygon’s technical and strategic roadmap. While Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani have often been more publicly visible, Bjelic has consistently been a key voice in shaping where Polygon goes next—particularly when it comes to core protocol decisions.
One of his most significant contributions in recent years has been his involvement in Polygon’s pivot toward zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. ZK-proofs represent the next frontier in blockchain scaling: they allow large batches of transactions to be verified cryptographically, without requiring every node to re-execute each transaction. This dramatically improves both scalability and privacy.
Polygon has invested heavily in this direction, launching Polygon zkEVM in 2023—a ZK-powered Ethereum-compatible blockchain that allows developers to deploy Ethereum smart contracts without modification. This was a landmark achievement in the ZK space, and Bjelic has been a consistent advocate for the technical direction it represents.
In 2024, Polygon further unified its ecosystem under the Polygon 2.0 vision, which aims to connect all Polygon chains through a shared liquidity layer and ZK-based interoperability protocol. Bjelic has spoken publicly about the importance of this architecture, describing the goal as building “the value layer of the internet”—a connected network of blockchains that can communicate trustlessly and efficiently.
Why Polygon’s Scaling Architecture Matters and How Bjelic Shaped It
To understand why Bjelic’s work is significant, it helps to understand the problem Polygon solves. Ethereum is the world’s most widely used smart contract platform, but its base layer processes roughly 15–30 transactions per second. For context, Visa processes an average of 1,700 transactions per second. That gap isn’t a minor inconvenience—it’s a fundamental barrier to mainstream adoption.
Polygon’s PoS chain can handle thousands of transactions per second with block confirmation times of approximately 2 seconds. For developers building games, financial applications, NFT marketplaces, or any application requiring high-frequency interactions, this difference is transformative.
Bjelic has consistently emphasized that scalability isn’t just a technical metric—it’s what makes decentralized applications usable for real people. A DeFi platform that charges $50 in gas fees to execute a trade is not a viable product for most of the world. Polygon’s infrastructure brought those fees down to fractions of a cent, opening the door to applications that simply couldn’t exist on Ethereum mainnet alone.
This philosophy—building infrastructure that enables others to build—has been central to Polygon’s identity, and Bjelic has been one of its most vocal champions.
What Are Mihailo Bjelic’s Views on the Future of Web3 and Blockchain Technology?
Bjelic has shared his perspective on the future of blockchain in various interviews and public forums. Several themes emerge consistently across his commentary.
First, Bjelic is a firm believer in Ethereum as the foundational layer for Web3. While other blockchain ecosystems have competed for developer mindshare, Bjelic has maintained that Ethereum’s security, decentralization, and network effects make it the most credible base layer for the long term. Polygon’s strategy has always been to extend Ethereum’s capabilities rather than replace it.
Second, Bjelic is deeply optimistic about ZK technology. He has described ZK-proofs as potentially “the most important cryptographic innovation in decades,” and Polygon’s resource allocation reflects that conviction. The company has made significant acquisitions in the ZK space, including Hermez Network and Mir Protocol, signaling that ZK is not a side project—it’s the central bet.
Third, Bjelic has spoken about the importance of developer experience. For Web3 to succeed, he argues, building on blockchain needs to feel as natural as building traditional web applications. The Polygon zkEVM is a direct expression of this belief: by maintaining full EVM compatibility, Polygon allows developers to bring their existing Solidity knowledge and tooling without learning an entirely new paradigm.
You can explore more about Polygon’s technical roadmap and ZK initiatives at polygon.technology.
How Has Polygon Grown Under the Co-Founders’ Leadership?
The numbers behind Polygon’s growth are striking. As of 2023, Polygon had processed over 2 billion transactions since its mainnet launch. The ecosystem includes thousands of decentralized applications, partnerships with major brands like Reddit, Starbucks, Nike, and Disney, and a developer community spanning more than 170 countries.
Polygon’s native token, MATIC (now transitioning to POL under the Polygon 2.0 upgrade), reached a market capitalization in the billions at its peak, making it one of the most valuable tokens in the broader Ethereum ecosystem.
These milestones didn’t happen by accident. Bjelic and his co-founders made deliberate choices—prioritizing developer grants, aggressive partnership development, and genuine infrastructure investment over short-term token price performance. That long-term orientation is visible in the Polygon 2.0 architecture, which is designed for a multi-year buildout rather than a quick product launch.
For a deeper breakdown of how Polygon 2.0 differs from earlier versions of the protocol, the official Polygon documentation is a valuable technical resource.
What Can Aspiring Blockchain Builders Learn From Mihailo Bjelic’s Approach?
Bjelic’s career offers a clear model for how to build consequential technology in a space that often rewards hype over substance. A few lessons stand out.
Start with a real problem. Polygon wasn’t created to capitalize on a market trend—it was created because Ethereum’s scalability limitations were a genuine technical constraint with real-world consequences. That clarity of purpose gave the team a durable reason to build through the inevitable challenges.
Invest in infrastructure, not just applications. It’s more glamorous to build a consumer-facing product, but Bjelic and his co-founders recognized early that the biggest opportunity was at the infrastructure layer. By giving developers the tools they needed to build, Polygon created a platform effect that a single application never could.
Stay technically ahead. Polygon’s pivot toward ZK technology happened before ZK-rollups became a mainstream talking point. That willingness to invest in cutting-edge cryptography—even when it wasn’t yet proven at scale—has given Polygon a significant technical lead in a space that others are only beginning to explore.
For those interested in getting involved in blockchain development or exploring career paths in Web3, resources like the Ethereum Foundation’s developer portal offer a strong starting point.
Mihailo Bjelic’s Legacy and What It Means for Blockchain’s Next Chapter
Bjelic’s story is still very much being written. Polygon 2.0 represents perhaps the most ambitious chapter yet—a complete reimagining of how a multi-chain ecosystem can be unified, governed, and scaled. The success or failure of that vision will do a great deal to define both Polygon’s future and Bjelic’s place in blockchain history.
What’s already clear is that his contributions have materially advanced what’s possible in decentralized technology. The scaling solutions Polygon pioneered have processed billions of real transactions for real users. The ZK infrastructure Polygon is building has the potential to push that figure into the trillions.
For a co-founder who started with a relatively simple question—how do we make Ethereum actually usable?—Bjelic has helped arrive at answers that are reshaping the architecture of the internet itself.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mihailo Bjelic and Polygon
Who is Mihailo Bjelic?
Mihailo Bjelic is a Serbian software engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Polygon (originally Matic Network) in 2017. Polygon is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum and one of the most widely used blockchain infrastructure platforms in the world.
What did Mihailo Bjelic build?
Bjelic co-built Polygon, a blockchain scaling ecosystem that includes a Proof-of-Stake sidechain, a zero-knowledge EVM (zkEVM), and a broader multi-chain architecture called Polygon 2.0. The network has processed over 2 billion transactions as of 2023.
What is the difference between Matic Network and Polygon?
Matic Network was the original name of the project when it launched in 2017. In February 2021, the team rebranded to Polygon to reflect an expanded vision—shifting from a single scaling solution to a full ecosystem of Ethereum scaling technologies.
What is Polygon 2.0 and why does it matter?
Polygon 2.0 is a long-term protocol upgrade that aims to unify all Polygon chains through a shared ZK-based interoperability layer and a unified liquidity protocol. It represents a fundamental architectural shift designed to make Polygon a network of interconnected, sovereign blockchains.
Is Mihailo Bjelic still involved with Polygon?
Yes. As of the most recent publicly available information, Bjelic remains active as a co-founder and continues to contribute to Polygon’s strategic and technical direction.
What is zero-knowledge technology and why does Bjelic support it?
Zero-knowledge proofs are a form of cryptography that allows one party to prove a statement is true without revealing any underlying data. In blockchain, ZK-proofs enable transactions to be verified efficiently and privately. Bjelic has described ZK technology as one of the most important cryptographic advances of recent decades and has directed significant Polygon resources toward its development.
