Gavin Wood
Gavin Wood is a technologist who has founded the popular blockchain company Polkadot but has left it now to build new projects Web3 space. Computer scientist Gavin is not only the creator of Polkadot but co-founded several blockchain tech companies like Ethereum, Grid Singularity, Parity Technologies and Web3 Foundation.
Quick Info
| Full Name | Gavin James Wood |
| Profession | Computer Scientist, Entrepreneur |
| Age | 43 Years |
| Birthplace | Lancaster, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Net Worth | $400-500 Million (Approx.) |
Early Life and Education
Gavin Wood was born on April 1980 in Lancaster city which is located in England. Gavin spent his childhood with his parent in Lancaster and completed high school studies from Lancaster Royal Grammer School. Since schooling days Gavin was interested into coding & tech related stuff, so he took admission in University of York in 2002 for pursuing Masters of Engineering in Computers. After completing the graduation course, In 2005 Gavin Wood enrolled into PHD course in Content-based visualisation.
Career in Blockchain Sector
Gavin Wood started his career with InTechnology Plc in the year 2000 where he worked as programmer & the main work profile was administration of DNS records. For 1.3 years from Dec 2005 to Feb 2007, Gavin worked as Sublead Programmer for Frontier Developments and later in 2007 he joined Microsoft as a Software Consultant for almost 4 years.
After resigning from the popular tech giant Microsoft Gavin Joined Lancaster Login response as a Technical Director where he worked for almost a year from Dec 2011 to Sep 2013 and after this job he worked as a CTO for OxLegal for few months.
From December 2013, Gavin Wood journey into the Cryptocurrency world begins when he joined Ethereum Foundation as a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Before joining Ethereum Gavin was involved in various Tech companies so he was the brain behind the development of Smart Contracts for Ethereum blockchain. After working at Ethereum Foundation for 2 years as CTO, Gavin exited in December 2015.
In October 2015, Gavin Wood founded 2 companies – one is Grid Singularity where he is working as a co-founder and the the second one is Parity technologies where he is a lead developer and Founder. In June 2017 he founded the Web3 Foundation where the company focus is to build protocols & technologies for the stability and development of decentralization.
Read More: Ciara Sun (C² Ventures)
Foundation of Polkadot Blockchain
As we all know Gavin Wood was one of the co-founder of Ethereum, so he was aware of the flaws present in old blockchain mechanism. Ethereum mechanism was based on “Proof of Work”, so Gavin created POLKADOT at Parity Technologies which is based on “Proof of Stake”. In this Proof of Stake mechanism of Polkadot, the developer can create a new blockchain which is called as Parachain to communicate with ledgers. So this method of creating own blockchains helped developers to set their own transactions fees and speed of the transactions.
Last year, in 2022, Gavin Wood stepped down from the position of CEO at Polkadot.
Net Worth
At present the estimated net worth of Gavin Wood is between $400 Million to $500 Million.
Social Media
| Gavin Wood | |
| @gavofyork | |
| Website | gavwood.com |
Some Lesser Known Facts
- Gavin has published 2 whitepapers – one on Ethereum Decentralized Transaction Ledger and other on Polkadot – Multichain Framework.
- Gavin has developed a boardgame Milton Keynes which can be played between 2-5 players.
- Gavin Wood can speak in multiple languages like Italian, Spanish, French.
- Gavin is also proficient in Marshal Arts – taekwon-do and he also does snowboarding in his free time.
- Gavin Wood recently announced a fund of 750 million dollars which will be offered to startups who are building apps and innovative solutions for the decentralized world.
