Among Ethereum’s early core members, Gavin Wood was one of the people who wrote the most code and specifications: he authored the Yellow Paper defining the Ethereum Virtual Machine, proposed Solidity, and later founded Polkadot. This article takes a chronological look at his major public work.

$DOT is the native token of the Polkadot network, which Gavin Wood helped found. Current price: 1.234 (24h +13.21%).

▍Ethereum’s Early Days

Gavin Wood is one of Ethereum’s co-founders and was the Ethereum Foundation’s first chief technology officer (CTO). He left the Ethereum Foundation in January 2016.

In 2014, he published the Ethereum Yellow Paper, which gave a rigorous, mathematical definition of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The White Paper describes “what it aims to do,” while the Yellow Paper explains “exactly how it works.” When clients developed by different teams implement the same specification, they can produce consistent results.

▍Solidity and Web3

Gavin Wood proposed and helped develop Solidity, a smart contract language. Its syntax was influenced by C++, Python, and JavaScript. Compiled Solidity code runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and Solidity remains the most widely used smart contract language on Ethereum.

The term “Web3” is generally believed to have been coined by Gavin Wood in 2014. Today, Web3 broadly refers to a vision of the internet that does not rely on a single centralized platform, where users control their own assets and data.

▍Founding Parity and the Foundation

In 2015, Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner co-founded Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company. Parity developed an Ethereum client and later took responsibility for developing the underlying framework for Polkadot.

In 2017, he and several collaborators established the nonprofit Web3 Foundation in Zug, Switzerland, to support research and development into decentralized networks such as Polkadot.

▍Polkadot

In 2016, Gavin Wood published the Polkadot White Paper, proposing a relay chain that connects multiple specialized blockchains (parachains). The relay chain provides shared security, while each parachain focuses on its own use case, and messages can be passed between chains.

The Polkadot mainnet launched in May 2020, and parachains began connecting to it in December 2021. DOT is Polkadot’s native token and can be used for staking and governance voting.

▍A Few Final Thoughts

Learning about the founder of a public blockchain can help us understand its design philosophy. But ultimately, a chain’s progress is best judged by its actual usage and ecosystem metrics. At first, I thought understanding candlestick charts was all I needed. Later, I realized that the fundamentals come first. It’s best to invest only what you can afford to lose.

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