Polygon paid betting firm millions to be a really bad validator
Polygon Labs has reportedly been paying a publicly-traded sports betting firm millions in crypto to run one of its now-defunct network validators. This is despite convincing the rest of the community that the company was just another validator. As reported by CoinDesk, DraftKings was announced as a Polygon validator in early 2022 in what the crypto company called “an important milestone.” However, Polygon failed to make public the special arrangement that would see it pay DraftKings millions of MATIC tokens over the next 20 months. According to CoinDesk’s extensive research, the sports betting firm received a lump sum of millions of MATIC tokens at the very beginning of the partnership in late 2021 followed by millions more through a special staking relationship . Though it’s not uncommon for high-profile firms to be paid by blockchain companies to work with them, this particular offer wasn’t offered to the vast majority of Polygon’s validators. In other words, DraftKings was ...