Gavin Wood

November 21, 2023 - Around 2 mins mins to read

Who Is Gavin Wood?

Gavin Wood is a prominent figure in the blockchain industry, known for his contributions to the development of decentralized applications (DApps) and his advocacy for decentralizing the internet. He is the co-founder of Parity Technologies, a blockchain company, and the president and founder of the Web3 Foundation.

Prior to his current ventures, Gavin Wood worked closely with Vitalik Buterin as one of the co-founders of Ethereum. During his time at Ethereum, he served as the chief technology officer (CTO) and played a crucial role in creating the first functional implementation of the platform.

One of Gavin Wood’s notable achievements is his proposal and development of Solidity, Ethereum’s smart contract programming language. Solidity is widely used in the Ethereum ecosystem and has contributed to the platform’s success in enabling decentralized applications.

Gavin Wood’s contributions to Ethereum also include publishing the yellow paper of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which serves as a foundational document for understanding the inner workings of the Ethereum network.

In 2016, Gavin Wood shifted his focus to a new project called Polkadot. Polkadot is a multi-chain blockchain ecosystem that aims to facilitate the development of interoperable DApps. Unlike Ethereum, Polkadot allows developers to have control over transaction fees and block confirmation speed.

Gavin Wood’s vision for Polkadot is to bridge the gap between private and public blockchains, enabling seamless transactions and collaboration between different projects, regardless of their underlying network infrastructure.