Gavin James Wood (born 1980) is an English computer scientist, a founder of

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capita ...

and creator of Polkadot and Kusama.

Early life

Wood was born in Lancaster,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

. He attended the

Lancaster Royal Grammar School Lancaster Royal Grammar School (LRGS) is a selective grammar school (day and boarding) for boys aged 11–18 in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Old students belong to The Old Lancastrians. The school's sixth form opened to girls in 2019. LRGS i ...

. He graduated from the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for post-nominals) is a collegiate research university, located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, co ...

with a

Master of Engineering A Master of Engineering (abbreviated MEng, M.E. or M.Eng.) is either an academic or professional master's degree in the field of engineering. International variations Australia In Australia, the Master of Engineering degree is a research de ...

(MEng) in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 2002 and completed his PhD entitled "Content-based visualisation to aid common navigation of musical audio" in 2005.

Career

Before working on

, Wood was a research scientist at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

. He was one of the founders of the Ethereum blockchain, which he has described as "one computer for the entire planet," with

Vitalik Buterin Vitaly "Vitalik" Buterin (born 1994) is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer and founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding ''Bitcoin Magazine'' in 2011. In 2014, Buterin deployed Eth ...

, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin during 2013–2014. Wood proposed and helped develop Solidity, a programming language for writing smart contracts. He also released the paper defining the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the

runtime system In computer programming, a runtime system or runtime environment is a sub-system that exists both in the computer where a program is created, as well as in the computers where the program is intended to be run. The name comes from the compile t ...

for

smart contract A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the r ...

s in Ethereum, in 2014. He also served as the Ethereum Foundation's first chief technology officer. Wood left the Ethereum Foundation in January of 2016. Wood founded Parity Technologies (formerly Ethcore), which developed a client for the Ethereum network and creates software for companies using blockchain technology, with Jutta Steiner, who also previously worked at the Ethereum Foundation. The company released the Parity Ethereum software

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...

, written in

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO( ...

, in early 2016. He held the title of chief web officer at Parity in 2018. He founded the Web3 Foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on decentralised internet infrastructure and technology, starting with the Polkadot network. In comparison to Bitcoin's

proof of work Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the ''prover'') proves to others (the ''verifiers'') that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expe ...

mechanism, Polkadot relies on

proof of stake Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of ...

mechanism and allows developers to create their own blockchain that can talk to other ledgers, forming a system of parachains. Developers can decide what kind of transaction fees to charge and how fast to confirm blocks of transactions across the digital ledgers. In 2019, he founded Kusama, an early stage experimental development environment for Polkadot.

Charity

Amid

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. A ...

Wood donated $5.8 million in cryptocurrency to support

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

Publications

*''Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger'' *''Polkadot: Vision for a Heterogenous Multi-Chain Framework''Polkadot White Paper
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Gavin 1980 births Living people British technology company founders People educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School Alumni of the University of York People associated with Ethereum People from Lancaster, Lancashire Chief technology officers