Gavin Wood: I hate suits and ties

Look at the photo of Gavin Wood to get an idea of what a blockchain developer who avoids project management positions looks like. He is a brilliant programmer, the inventor of the Solidity smart contract language, and a serial entrepreneur who also happens to be a terrible manager. The individual who entered the crypto space with the intention of building “one computer for the entire planet,” but who broke under the weight of crypto-maximalism and refused all managerial positions.

Gavin Wood. Source: Bloomberg

Gavin Wood is 42. He attended Royal Lancaster Grammar School before enrolling in the University of York, where he earned a Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in Computer Systems and Software Engineering. In addition, Gavin holds a Ph.D.

Wood isn't wed and doesn't have any kids. He keeps his personal life private. He never discusses his expenses or future plans.

However, there are some things that we are aware of:

● Hobbies: music and photography;

● Sports: black belt in Taekwondo;

● Scientific works: philosophy;

● Net worth: $450 million;

● Main sources of income: ETH and DOT;

● Charity: $5.8 million to Ukraine (March 2022).

Ethereum period

Wood began his career as a programmer and software security consultant at Microsoft. However, Gavin's meeting with Vitalik Buterin, who invited him to join a group aiming to “create something better than bitcoin,” marked the start of his journey into the world of cryptocurrencies.

He co-founded Ethereum along with Buterin, Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Lubin.

Wood and the team saw Ethereum, which debuted in 2014, as a massive ecosystem with its own cryptocurrency. Users could create and modify digital products, including smart contracts. Wood described their goal at the time as “one computer for the entire planet.”

BTC supporters disliked this initiative. Gavin explained what has happened in an interview:

“When I started Ethereum in early 2014, there was a lot of bitcoin maximalism and there still is. It led to a very kind of toxic environment. At Ethereum, we were trying to push cryptocurrency blockchain technology forward. That was our key aim. We didn't have any ill will towards bitcoin. We were just technologists. At least, I speak for myself. I don't speak for anyone else necessarily. But we got a lot of hate from the bitcoin world, a lot of unneeded unreasonable skepticism and sometimes worse.”

It was almost like the crypto version of nationalism. It's like, “Well, I'm behind this team, and therefore I cannot be behind any other team. Any other team must be an enemy. And if you used to be part of our team, but now you're on this other team, you must be a traitor.” There's this kind of mentality.

Wood resigned from the company's founders due to this toxic environment and his disagreement with Buterin's choice to start a hard fork of the Ethereum network following the hack.

He informed employees that Ethereum has become yet another network competing for dominance in the oversaturated world of blockchains, and he does not wish to participate in this.

Gavin, nevertheless, continues to support and advise the Ethereum Classic developers. Even so, he occasionally claims that this project hasn't entirely avoided “crypto-nationalism.” He therefore set out to completely alter the blockchain's militant mentality, or at the very least to moderate it by allowing multiple chains.

Polkadot period

With math Ph.D. Jutta Steiner, Wood co-founded Parity Technologies, a software development company. Two years later, he co-founded the Web3 Foundation, which grants money to teams developing decentralized web technology. These two companies are behind the development of a new, one-of-a-kind parachain technology that connects various blockchains.

Gavin Wood put all his efforts to build a system that would serve as a bridge to other networks. A “patchwork of independent and isolated legal systems of the internet,” as he put it, was what he wanted to get rid of. A multichain Polkadot was launched in May 2020 by Wood and two other co-founders, Robert Habermeier and Peter Chaban. For Wood, this was a chance to start coding his own architecture from scratch and develop a brand-new, non-toxic version of Ethereum – a parachain that unites competing projects.

The project developed rapidly and attracted the attention of the crypto community. But Wood shocked everyone in October 2022 by announcing his resignation as CEO of Parity Technologies. This sparked a social media backlash, with the former CEO accused of making millions on DOT while abandoning people who trusted him during cryptocurrency's darkest days. Gavin, who is normally unflappable, reacted very emotionally to this by publishing a statement on the official website stating that, in general, he was not made for leadership positions and because of this he hates suits and ties. It is a pity for him to waste time on some rallies and discussions of potential partnerships. Coding is his line of work. Therefore, he remains the main architect of the parachain, and does not want to deal with financial and marketing issues and will not.

“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. A good CEO needs to be available to others on a far more continuous basis. They need to enjoy representing the company, both internally and externally. They need to not be bothered by large swathes of their time becoming eaten up in meetings and calls with a plethora of multicolored boxes on their calendar.”

Many regard Gavin Wood as an idealist because he has been closely associated with cryptocurrencies for 9 years, but he remains optimistic that a global system of social interaction “based on truth, not trust” can be created. He is confident that the Polkadot business model will be able to transform the blockchain industry, where projects compete with one another for the top spot rather than working together to advance the crypto economy.

We can only wish him luck from here on out.