Former Polygon Labs president Ryan Wyatt joins Optimism as Chief Growth Officer

Polygon Lab’s former president Ryan Wyatt has joined Optimism, the firm building out the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling protocol OP Mainnet, as Chief Growth Officer.

Wyatt told The Block that he will no longer be an advisor to Polygon after joining Optimism. However, he will still be on the Board of Directors for the nonprofit Gamers Outreach and a venture partner at the VC firm Bitkraft in his new role.

As Chief Growth Officer, Wyatt will be responsible for expanding the Optimism ecosystem, collaborating with developers, bolstering partnerships and coordinating with external contributors. Wyatt noted particular enthusiasm for Optimism’s Superchain, a series of Layer 2 networks sharing security, a communication layer and an open-source development stack.

“We’re now at a point in time where we finally have started to solve this large infrastructure issue, and Superchain just does that. And so it’s going to be fun,” Wyatt said. “It’s a very unique opportunity for me on a personal level that I haven’t had the opportunity to do before, which excites me.”

Roles prior to Optimism

Wyatt joined Polygon in February of 2022, in which he focused on expanding gaming, fashion, entertainment, news and sports endeavors.

Before that, Wyatt was the head of gaming for the video streaming platform YouTube for seven years, the vice president of programming at the Major League Gaming (now owned by game development giant Activision Blizzard) and an e-sports commentator, The Block previously reported.