Among Ethereum’s early core contributors, Gavin Wood was one of the people who wrote the most code and specifications: he wrote the Yellow Paper defining the Ethereum Virtual Machine, proposed Solidity, and later founded Polkadot. This article reviews his major public contributions in chronological order.

$DOT is Polkadot’s native token, which can be used for staking and governance voting. Currently 0.93 (24h -1.69%).

■ Early Ethereum

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

In 2014, he published the Ethereum Yellow Paper, which gave a rigorous mathematical definition of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The white paper explains “what it aims to do,” while the yellow paper explains “how it works in practice.” Clients developed by different teams can produce consistent results by implementing the same specification.

■ Solidity and Web3

Gavin Wood proposed and helped develop Solidity, a smart contract language. Its syntax was influenced by C++, Python, and JavaScript. Solidity is compiled to run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine and 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 usually refers to a vision of the internet that doesn’t 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 of decentralized networks such as Polkadot.

■ Polkadot

In 2016, Gavin Wood published the Polkadot white paper. It envisioned using a relay chain to connect multiple blockchains with distinct roles (parachains): the relay chain provides shared security, parachains focus on their own functions, 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.

■ Summary

Learning about the founder of a public blockchain can help us understand its design philosophy. But ultimately, a blockchain’s progress depends on its actual usage and ecosystem data. There’s no need to rush—surviving matters far more than how much you make in a single trade.

Did you know this already?

This content is for reference only. Make your own decisions.