Ryan Wyatt Joins Optimism
Ryan Wyatt, the former President of Polygon Labs and head of YouTube Gaming, is set to play a key role in supporting the adoption of the Ethereum scaling network. After four months since his departure from Polygon Labs, Wyatt is joining the team at Optimism.
On Monday, it was announced that Wyatt will assume the role of Chief Growth Officer for Optimism Unlimited, a newly created subsidiary of the Optimism Foundation. His responsibilities will include building a team to support adoption and development on Optimism across various functions such as business development, marketing, partnerships, and more.
Wyatt expressed his enthusiasm for Optimism, describing it to Decrypt as having the “best team in all of crypto.” He sees an opportunity to enhance the non-technical efforts of the Optimism Collective and plans to leverage his skills in building communities.
Transition from Polygon Labs
Wyatt was with Polygon Labs from February 2022 until July of the same year when he stepped down. Marc Boiron, previously Chief Legal Officer at Polygon Labs, assumed the role of CEO as Wyatt departed. Wyatt’s decision to move to a new challenge was driven by the desire to contribute to the growth of a decentralized network in its early stages.
According to Wyatt, this is a unique moment to build a team, a community, and then transition the responsibility to the world. He believes there’s a significant opportunity to make an impact at Optimism.
Optimism’s Growth and Wyatt’s Impact
Jing Wang, co-founder of Optimism, anticipates that Wyatt’s addition and his plans to intensify adoption efforts will have a substantial impact. Wang believes that Wyatt can significantly boost adoption for Optimism, potentially by a factor of 100.
During his tenure at Polygon Labs, Wyatt played a crucial role in attracting prominent brands such as Starbucks, Nike, and Reddit to build on the Ethereum scaling network. This led to Polygon being named Decrypt’s 2022 project of the year, primarily due to significant mainstream brand adoption.
Focusing on Decentralization
Wyatt plans to approach business development and brand adoption for Optimism similarly to his strategies at Polygon. However, he emphasizes Optimism’s focus on decentralization and aims to encourage growth across communities rather than forming a large, central team.
Optimism’s OP Stack technology is already driving networks like Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase. Wyatt envisions Optimism as the bedrock for all blockchains, with a fast-paced movement toward widespread adoption.
Gaming as a Key Focus
Coming from a gaming and esports background, Wyatt led YouTube Gaming before joining Polygon Labs. He reiterates the importance of gaming at Optimism, particularly in driving adoption around digital item ownership. Wyatt believes digital ownership in certain games will be crucial and plans to focus on innovative initiatives within the gaming sector.
“That’s why it’s called the OP Stack,” added Wang, citing the gaming term “OP” or “overpowered.”
