“Whether Web3 platforms or nations, systems which cannot unite their economic drivers and bring them into a mutually supportive common security umbrella will ultimately fall to those which can. Common Security is not an option.”
Gavin Wood has a well-traveled educational background, touting a master’s degree in engineering from England’s University of York. After receiving his master’s, he went on to earn his PhD in philosophy from the University of York. Wood has deep experience in the computer programming world, including consultation work for Microsoft Research.
He has a tally of crypto industry achievements under his belt, including his work as one of the founders of Polkadot, which aims to provide an interoperable blockchain-based internet filled with applications and solutions that work together in a decentralized fashion. Wood also founded Kusama, which serves as a testing ground of sorts for Polkadot.
A co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain as well, Wood has been in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space for a long time. His initial introduction to Bitcoin was in 2011, although he did not catch the crypto bug until 2013 when he dove deeper into the technology and its far-reaching potential. Wood completed a notable amount of early work on Ethereum, such as his collaborative work designing the early tech for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. His other endeavors include co-founding the Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies. The Web3 Foundation helps entities such as Polkadot and Kusama via research, funding, advocacy and collaboration. Wood is actually credited with coming up with the term “Web3” back in 2014. He also invented the proof-of-authority blockchain consensus, the Whisper protocol and the Solidity contract language.
Although Wood has a fairly significant Twitter following of more than 300,000, he did not tweet that much throughout 2022. When he did post, it was mainly about Polkadot and related developments. Wood was formerly the CEO of Parity, a company aiming to build out the Web3 world, in part by overseeing Polkadot. In October, the crypto veteran handed the Parity baton to Björn Wagner, one of Parity’s other co-founders.
Wood remained with Parity as its chief architect, explaining that the CEO position was never intended to be a long-term play for him and was not a great fit for him, personally. Wood’s goal in retaining his position as chief architect included further pushing Polkadot adoption. Polkadot and Kusama had a notable amount of ecosystem action in 2022 related to their projects and parallel blockchains.
Wood will likely continue forward with his push for Web3 and Polkadot. He was not very active on Twitter at the beginning of 2023, although he did post a recap of Polkadot’s 2022. Late in 2022, Wood gave a speech at a Polkadot conference called Sub0. During his speech, he detailed his past work and future plans and expectations with regard to Polkadot. Given the length of time he has been involved in the crypto space, Wood will likely continue his work in the sector as a reputable name.
