Gavin James Wood (born April 1980) is a British programmer who is a Co-founder of Polkadot Network and also a Co-founder and former CTO of Ethereum Foundation.^[1] He invented fundamental components of the blockchain industry, including Solidity, Proof-of-Authority consensus, and Whisper.^[2]

Gavin Wood was also the founder and CTO of Parity Technologies^[12] (founded 2015), the organization that released the Parity Bitcoin technology stack.^[17] He coined the term Web 3.0 in 2014 and serves as President of Web3 Foundation^[16], whose mission is to nurture cutting-edge applications for decentralized web software protocols. ^[4][5]

Education

Gavin Wood attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. After graduating from Lancaster Royal Grammar School, he pursued software engineering and studied for his Masters in engineering at the University of York. For his doctoral degree, he decided on music visualization for human-computer interfacing (HCI) as the preferred field of study at his postgraduate alma mater, the University of York. Wood continued on to graduate from the University of York with a Master of Engineering (MEng) in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 2002. He also completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at York in 2005, with a thesis titled "Content-based visualization to aid common navigation of musical audio". The thesis directly led to Moodbar, a static music visualization used in several prominent music applications on the Linux desktop.^[6]

Career

Before Ethereum

Gavin Wood began his career in the early 2000s, focusing on developing scalable architecture for audio-signal refinement through a project called Exscalibar. After earning his Ph.D., he worked on a next-generation cross-platform game engine at Frontier Developments. In 2007, he founded Quid Pro Code, a software shop where he designed and implemented Martta, the first C++ language workbench. During this time, he also consulted with Microsoft Research on technical aspects of embedded domain-specific languages.

In 2011, as the Technical Director at Lancaster Logic Response, Wood utilized his Ph.D. techniques to develop a system for creating real-time light shows for music, which were later deployed in London’s top nightclubs. He also worked on Noted, an extensible audio analysis and notation C++ environment. ^[7][8]

Ethereum (2013–2016)

In 2013, while working on OxLegal, a smart text contract editor, Gavin Wood met Vitalik Buterin. This meeting led to the conception of Ethereum, a global, open-source platform for decentralized applications. In January 2014, Wood and Buterin, along with other collaborators, coded the first functional implementation of Ethereum, known as PoC-1 or the alpha release, in a beach house in Miami.

Gavin Wood became a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Ethereum Foundation. He authored the Ethereum Yellow Paper, which formally specified the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the runtime system for smart contracts in Ethereum. Over the next two years, Wood focused on the development of Ethereum, including the general platform architecture, the majority of the C++ Ethereum client, and the initial design of Solidity, a programming language for writing smart contracts. ^{[9][10][11][12][6]}

Parity Technologies and Blockchain Projects (2016–2017)

In 2016, Gavin Wood founded EthCore, which later became Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure firm for the decentralized web. Parity Technologies was co-founded with Ethereum alumni, including Dr. Jutta Steiner, Dr. Aeron Buchanan, and Ken Kappler. At Parity, Wood initiated projects such as Parity Ethereum, the fastest and most advanced Ethereum client, and Substrate, a flexible tech stack for building custom blockchains.

In addition to his work at Parity, Wood co-founded Grid Singularity in collaboration with Ewald Hesse, Dr. Ana Trbovich, and other blockchain pioneers. Grid Singularity is a decentralized energy data exchange platform built on blockchain technology. Wood was also involved in decentralized asset management for multiple blockchains through Melonport AG in 2016. ^[6][1]

Web3 Foundation & Kusama

In 2017, Gavin Wood founded Web3 Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting decentralized internet infrastructure and technology. The foundation’s first major project was the Polkadot network, a sharded multi-chain interoperability network that Wood co-founded after leaving Ethereum.

Web3 Foundation also launched the “canary network” Kusama, which serves as an experimental environment for developers to test new technologies before deploying them on the Polkadot mainnet. Kusama’s flexible governance model allows for faster updates and innovations, playing a crucial role in the Polkadot ecosystem by providing a secure environment for real-time testing. Many features and improvements that are later implemented on Polkadot are first tested on Kusama, making it integral to Polkadot’s launch and ongoing development.

Gavin Wood continues to play a key role in the development and strategic direction of both Kusama and Polkadot, underscoring the importance of a secure platform for the evolution of Web3. Additionally, Wood has helped found or advise various organizations, including Blockchain Capital and Polychain Capital. ^{[6][24][25][26][27][28][3]}

Polkadot

In 2016, Gavin Wood founded Polkadot, a network protocol that enables the transfer of arbitrary data, including tokens, across blockchains alongside Robert Habermeier, a Thiel fellow and member of the Rust community with a background in blockchain, distributed systems, and cryptography, and Peter Czaban^[17], Technology director for Web3 Foundation with a Masters degree in Engineering from the University of Oxford and background in defense, finance, data analytics, machine learning, and business development. He was also responsible for publishing the Polkadot whitepaper.^[18]

"Polkadot is a multi-chain. The idea is that it's a blockchain, but we bundle lots of different blocks up all at the same time that can be executed in parallel. So these things can all be executed at the same time. In doing so, we create this sort of idea of a multi-chain, because every block is actually lots of different blocks that we can in principle run a hundred times the amount of transaction throughput that just one chain, like Bitcoin or Ethereum could." ^[22]

Polkadot raised approximately $144 million in its first token sale in October 2017, with major investors including Boost VC, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital. ^[19]

As the lead developer of Polkadot and its experimental development environment, Kusama, Wood oversaw a busy development for the project. He also worked on the DOT token redenomination event in August 2020, helping the project and the community to fight against unscrupulous exchanges that listed the “new DOT” tokens before the redenomination was concluded. ^[20][21]

"Polkadot is really like a community of chains that share their security, this means that you get guaranteed secure interoperability between the chains. Basically, the chains can send messages and those messages are guaranteed to arrive and they're guaranteed not to be in any way corrupted, they're guaranteed that the sending chain won't have reverted and then finalize some other block later because of some economic attack for example and this is crucially different because it allows you to build truly composable applications rather than just some kind of lossy network" ^[23]

Stepping Down as CEO

On October 21, 2022, Gavin Wood announced his resignation as CEO of Parity Technologies, the corporate entity behind Polkadot. In a company blog post^[13], Gavin Wood said he was leaving his position to spend more time on making blockchain technology more relevant to the public:

“It therefore means more time to focus on the stuff which I both enjoy and where I feel that I can deliver the most value to the company’s mission. I’ll be pointing my regained focus towards exploring how we can contribute to making Polkadot and Web3 more relevant to large swathes of the population. This will begin by helping the community design and build several interesting chain-integrated social primitives which I think are crucial for us to deliver a true Web3 platform.”

Gavin also mentioned that his skillset is better suited for more hands-on responsibilities like coding and design:

“The role of CEO has never been one which I have coveted (and this dates back long before Parity). I can act at being a CEO well enough for a short while, but it’s not where I’m going to find eternal happiness. Anyone who has worked with me knows where my heart lies. I’m a thinker, coder, designer and architect. Like many such people, I work best asynchronously; a great day is taking 10 hours straight to think out some problem, prototype something or collapse some disparate thoughts into an article.”

Gavin still remains the company’s majority shareholder and assumed the position of Parity’s new Chief Architect while Björn Wagner^[14], the firm’s co-founder stepped into the position of CEO. ^[13][15]

JAM

JAM, or Join-Accumulate Machine, introduced by Gavin Wood, represents Polkadot’s hybrid transactionless blockchain model designed to enhance modularity and efficiency within the network. This model proposes a more flexible system for future parachains. Gavin Wood introduced JAM at the Token2049 conference in April 2024, detailed in the JAM Gray Paper.

JAM aims to address these challenges by integrating the strengths of Polkadot and Ethereum into a unified platform. This new model introduces a global singleton permissionless object environment, akin to Ethereum’s smart contract environment, combined with secure sideband computation parallelized over a scalable node network, a concept pioneered by Polkadot.

JAM eliminates traditional transactions, processing actions through stages: Refine, Accumulate, and onTransfer. This system allows for the deployment and execution of code based on computational resources used, similar to Ethereum’s gas system. DOT remains the primary currency within the JAM framework, used for paying fees, participating in governance, and staking. The model supports Turing-complete computations, ensuring the integrity of operations while minimizing costs.

To promote JAM's development, Gavin Wood announced a JAM prize in conjunction with the Web3 Foundation. A total of 10 million DOT will incentivize additional implementations of JAM.

JAM envisions a future where parachains can interact more seamlessly, improving overall user experience and fostering innovation across the network. This approach aims to reduce barriers for new projects, making it easier and more cost-effective to deploy and operate parachains. JAM also seeks to streamline the process of acquiring parachain slots, potentially moving away from the auction-based system to a more inclusive method. ^[29][30][31]