Polygon Labs spends $250 million to acquire Coinme and Sequence, 'foundational' elements of its Open Money Stack

Polygon Labs, the primary R&D outfit behind the eponymous chain, is spending a quarter of a billion dollars to acquire two crypto firms, Coinme and Sequence, as it redoubles attention on payments supported by the recently announced Open Money Stack. 

Coinme, a crypto exchange founded in 2014, and Sequence, a wallet infrastructure firm founded in 2017, will be rolled into Polygon Labs, “delivering three key components of the forthcoming Polygon Open Money Stack, including physical cash and digital fiat on- and off-ramps, wallet infrastructure, and cross-chain orchestration through intents,” the firm said in a statement. 

Terms of the deals were undisclosed, though Coinme will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary following the close of the transaction. Polygon’s definitive agreements, totaling more than $250 million to acquire both firms, are subject to regulatory approval. 

Polygon's Open Money Stack, unveiled last week and expected to launch by the end of the year, represents a new focus for Polygon Labs on global value transfers. The solution offers interoperable and customizable parts of the money tech stack — from identity and compliance solutions to transaction routing and fiat onboarding — to reduce the need for multiple service providers. 

"Bringing wallet and onramping functionality in-house lets us simplify the experience for both users and builders," a Polygon spokesperson told The Block via email. "Instead of stitching together a bunch of separate services, developers can access everything through a single, consistent API, which makes it easier to build, scale, and stay compliant. For the Open Money Stack, that means smoother onboarding, better reliability, and a foundation that helps the ecosystem grow faster."

The Coinme acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter, while the Sequence transaction should finalize this month.

Strategic shift

The move marks something of a strategic shift for Polygon Labs, which, while not allergic to acquisitions, has historically built its needed tech in-house and has been more likely to spin out independent projects than grow through investments. 

"Polygon Labs has historically been more likely to incubate and spin out independent teams when the work is exploratory, research-heavy, or served best by long-term autonomy and ecosystem alignment," the spokesperson said. "In the case of these acquisitions, we recognized the ability to accelerate timelines by obtaining regulatory licenses, in the case of Coinme, and advanced technology, in the case of Sequence, that directly accelerated the roadmap and mission of Polygon Labs. All of this is to build the Open Money Stack, through regulated payments infrastructure, wallets, compliance, and orchestration."

Since its major rebranding and operational shift from Matic to Polygon in 2020, the labs company has made several notable acquisitions, including the Hermez Network and Mir Protocol in 2021, and Toposware in 2024, all of which helped expand Polygon’s zero-knowledge footprint. 

At the same time, Polygon Labs has also spun out several crypto projects, including the modular blockchain Avail, led by departed Polygon founder Anurag Arjun, and ZK-powered verification solution ZisK, founded by former Polygon exec Jordi Baylina, who joined the project via the Hermez acquisition.

Polygon’s acquisition of Hermez was significant as “the first-ever full-blown merger of blockchain networks,” including a complete token swap for around 12.5% of Polygon's treasury at the time.

Miden, a ZK-optimized rollup, and ZK-powered identity solution Privado ID, itself based on the acquired Hermez tech, were also spun out of Polygon Labs. 

In mid-2025, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal took over as CEO of the Polygon Foundation and announced plans to deprecate the Polygon zkEVM chain, based on Hermez tech, while pivoting resources to Polygon PoS and the Agglayer cross-chain aggregator. 

The Ethereum-aligned network has since pushed out major updates, like the Rio hardfork and Heimdall v2 upgrade, described as major tech overhauls. Rio, for instance, was a payments-focused upgrade that pushed network performance toward 5,000 transactions per second.

"Polygon Labs is no longer a scaling company, but a blockchain-based payments company," the spokesperson said. "This is a natural evolution of how the blockchain has been primarily used, and with these acquisitions, it demonstrates a commitment to building the chain in that direction. There’s been a ton of organic payment-based usage on Polygon Chain in the last few years."

Building the Open Money Stack

Polygon is now redoubling attention on global value transfers, particularly using stablecoins on the Open Money Stack, an open and integrated middleware tech stack under development “to instantly and reliably move money anywhere,” announced officially last week.

"We aspire for Polygon to be the biggest stablecoin money movement avenue in the world,” Nailwal said in a statement. “Our mission is to move all money onchain and rebuild how money works so it is instant, reliable, programmable, and open.”

Coinme and Sequence “will play foundational roles” in building the Open Money Stack, Polygon Labs noted. “Together, they bring the core capabilities required on top of Polygon Chain to move money seamlessly between traditional financial systems and onchain rails, while meeting the compliance, reliability, and scale demanded by global payments.”

The Open Money Stack, designed to enable "consumers, businesses, and agents" to use money "how they see fit," will support "reliable, instant global payments" and other use cases, the spokesperson noted. "Announcing [the acquisitions] together helps show how these pieces fit into a single, more complete platform rather than as isolated moves."

Coinme, for instance, holds money-transmitter licenses enabling it to operate in 48 U.S. states, as well as a white label crypto-as-a-service offering for enterprises, a physical fiat-to-crypto network spanning more than 50,000 retail locations, and other APIs, SKDs, and wallet infra. The firm’s backers include Coinstar and MoneyGram, on the traditional side, as well as the stablecoin issuer Circle and major crypto investors Pantera and Digital Currency Group. 

"Money transmitter licenses and other compliant frameworks make it easier for existing institutions to leverage the Open Money Stack to build their payment or money movement solutions," the spokesperson said. Prior to the acquisition, Coinme and Polygon did not have a formal commercial relationship.

Meanwhile, Sequence, backed by the likes of Brevan Howard, Coinbase, Polychain, Consensys, and Ubisoft, among others, offers a smart wallet routing and intents engine to simplify cross-network crypto payment flows without the need for bridges or swaps. Trails, powered by Sequence, delivers universal “1-click crypto transactions … across any chain, using any token and any wallet.”

“Fragmentation across blockchains has been one of the biggest barriers to mainstream adoption,” Sequence co-founder and CEO Peter Kieltyka said in a statement. “By simplifying onboarding and cross-chain payments, Polygon is creating an environment where global payments can feel familiar and reliable.”

According to Polygon Labs co-founder Marc Boiron, the Open Money Stack will support all forms of onchain money, from tokenized deposits to stablecoins. “Senders will not think about the form of onchain money recipients prefer, and recipients will not need to dictate what is sent,” Boiron co-wrote alongside Nailwal. “This decoupling of the money sent from the money received is foundational to open money.”

The Open Money Stack will also “unlock yields that have traditionally only existed offchain,” offering ways to deploy “idle” capital in “global earning opportunities.”