Original Title: Gavin Wood on why Ethereum remains ‘unchanged,’ Polkadot, and moonlighting as a DJ

Author: Liam Kelly, DL News

Translation: Lyric, ChainCatcher

• Co-founder of Ethereum, Gavin Wood, was interviewed by DL News amid a 50% plunge in Polkadot.
• After investing heavily in marketing, Polkadot is facing strong opposition from users.
• Gavin Wood talks about his other identity - as a DJ.

Earlier this year, when students of Polkadot ended their five-week developer boot camp in Hong Kong, they celebrated with a party. At the graduation ceremony, members of the DeFi network saw a familiar face take position behind the DJ booth - Gavin Wood, co-founder of Polkadot and one of the architects of Ethereum.

At the age of 44, after playing a key role in building the DeFi ecosystem for a decade, Gavin Wood has rekindled his initial passion - music. Wood told DL News, "If you see any articles related to DJ Wasabi, that's me."

Seeking a New Direction

His move comes as Polkadot has been struggling to find a breakthrough.

According to employees, in 2023, Parity Technologies, the company building the Polkadot network, laid off nearly a third of its 385 employees due to a funding shortage. Polkadot was once one of the top ten cryptocurrency projects by token value. This year, its DOT token has dropped by 50%, while ETH has risen by 5%, and competitor Cardano has dropped by 45%. In July of this year, Polkadot faced more criticism, with critics slamming its decision to spend $87 million in the first half of the year. Nearly half of this was used for marketing activities, including spending $400,000 to create an animated version of the Polkadot logo on the cryptocurrency website CoinMarketCap. Seun Lanlege, a former core developer at Parity, expressed on X, "Polkadot's treasury has wasted so much money on the wrong marketing, it's just crazy."

A representative of Parity stated that the marketing expenses were a result of the project's governance system. The representative told DL News, "The expenditure on the marketing plan is a direct result of on-chain financial support voted on by the community."

With Wood transitioning to being a DJ, many in the DeFi community may wonder if he has disconnected from his daily work. Despite being the Chief Designer at Parity, Wood dismissed these concerns and downplayed his role in the project. He said, "My position is much lower."

"I Am a Scientist"

During the Web3 Summit in August, Wood was interviewed by DL News at Funkhaus in Berlin. Here, Wood shared his views on blockchain design and technology. "I want to experiment. I am a researcher, a scientist, a scholar, and curiosity is my main driving force here," he said. "For Polkadot, the biggest problem is that Ethereum has to some extent remained unchanged." In fact, Wood is adept at pursuing unconventional adventures. He is preparing to launch a set of "personal" systems later this year, which will imprint machine-generated, QR code-like patterns on people's bodies.

Wood's career began with the fusion of computer science and music.

In 2005, Wood completed a five-year doctoral program at the University of York, researching how computers listen to music. He also turned the music heard by machines into visual representations. His thesis showed what Dave Brubeck's classic jazz piece "Take Five" would look like to a computer.

Wood has also been involved in tech projects. He worked as a researcher at Microsoft and taught geometry at a Catholic school in Italy. He sold lighting systems to nightclubs and bars in London, and then attempted to launch a Microsoft Word plugin to automate the tedious work of lawyers. Shortly after, he met Vitalik Buterin, Jeffrey Wilcke, and Charles Hoskinson, who were developing Ethereum. For Wood, Ethereum was essentially a weekend project he started in early 2010 while developing the Word plugin.

Inventing Ethereum

He wrote one of the first Ethereum client software applications in C++, which allowed developers to interact with the blockchain. Wood helped invent the programming language Solidity for Ethereum and co-authored the "Ethereum Yellow Paper," the first formal specification of the uses and operation of the Ethereum network. He told DL News, "I brought more design and engineering stuff, I would say, it's almost an artistic nature."

Despite becoming a cornerstone of decentralized finance through co-creating blockchain systems, solidifying his position in the cryptocurrency space, Wood feels that Ethereum lacks vitality. He said, "Compared to the vision Vitalik and I proposed in 2014, the Ethereum protocol has basically remained unchanged."

In 2016, Wood struck out on his own and co-founded Polkadot with Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban. The idea was to create a more efficient and affordable network to support dApps and smart contracts. "For Polkadot, the biggest problem is that Ethereum has to some extent remained unchanged," he said. "I want to continue to develop." The project raised $144 million through an initial coin offering in 2017 - a form of cryptocurrency crowdfunding where people invest real money in exchange for the network's native tokens. It officially started producing blocks in 2020. In the 2021 boom, its total value surged to $54 billion, and DOT became a top ten cryptocurrency.

Improving "Cumbersome" Cross-Chain

He also introduced blockchain to address key bottlenecks faced by Ethereum. Specifically, second-layer blockchains (aggregating transactions into low-cost proofs and then sending them to Ethereum's mini-blockchain) are now common on Ethereum.

Polkadot introduced a similar design from day one, called parachains. Any project choosing to build and launch its own parachain on top of Polkadot can easily interact with other Polkadot-based projects. For second-layer networks based on Ethereum, users must interact with cumbersome cross-chain bridges to transfer funds between networks.

Wood stated that Polkadot is closer to Ethereum's early vision. "Second-layer networks were not a dream when everything was still a blank slate. The dream that Ethereum core developers pushed five years ago looks a bit like Polkadot."

"I Am an Experimenter"

In April of this year, he further built on this vision through an upgraded version of Polkadot called JAM (Join-Accumulate Machine). JAM will allow anyone to build a parachain without having the builders auction off a parachain. This upgrade is not just technical. Its launch comes at a time when Polkadot is trying to revive its glory in 2021. However, escaping the long-standing dilemma of DeFi is not easy. Employees have stated that due to excessive executive compensation, Parity not only needed to lay off a large number of employees, but also handled the layoff process awkwardly. The company announced the layoffs a week before heading to Mallorca, but did not disclose the specific employees to be laid off. A Parity employee referred to it as "a surreal, prankish joke." Wood did not attend the beach vacation, which angered and confused many. In July, Parity completed the restructuring and is currently hiring new employees. A representative of Parity said that their job postings list 11 vacant positions.

Now, Wood's next project may once again attract attention, which he calls "proof-of-ink." At the Web3 Summit, Wood explained how the Polkadot blockchain generates unique tattoo patterns. These patterns can prove that a person is who they claim to be online without revealing other information. It seems to address the common issue of Sybil attacks (where a user creates multiple identities) in cryptocurrency.

Wood displayed the QR code on his bicep. Before its launch at the end of 2024, he is still researching other designs. "I really don't want this to be misconstrued as some kind of tattoo identification system." The practice of tattooing identity markers on the skin may provoke strong reactions, especially in places like Germany. Wood is angry at such implications.

"I've spent a long time emphasizing that this has nothing to do with identity," he told DL News. "This is about individuality. I've spent a long time emphasizing privacy, using strong encryption technology to ensure privacy. I really don't want anyone to say this is a tattoo identification system because that's completely misleading."

The project demonstrates how Wood always follows his instincts, regardless of where they may lead, from cryptocurrency-related tattoos to performing music as DJ Wasabi. "For me, it's not worth doing unless it's novel," he said. "I am an experimenter."

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