The creator of Ethereum’s Solidity language doesn’t like crypto conferences but does want to make the world a better place with Polkadot and Parity.
“Does it bother you that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin made Time’s 2021 list of the 100 most influential people?” Magazine asks.
It’d be a weird question to ask most people, but not Ethereum co-founder Dr. Gavin Wood.
“If I said, No, it has never bothered me. I think it would be a lie,” Wood tells Magazine, before taking a short pause…
“It certainly doesn’t bother me right now,” the prominent computer scientist and blockchain pioneer says with energy, despite being on the third day of a five-day fast, drinking only sparkling water and coffee.
“What I want is not recognition. I’ve got enough of that. What I want is product,” the 45-year-old declares.
While Wood may never have graced Time, he has earned plenty of recognition over the years since joining Buterin as a co-founder of Ethereum in 2014 alongside six others.
Buterin has never shied away from recognizing Wood, either. Over the years, Buterin has publicly acknowledged Wood’s contributions, even sharing an email from Wood sent in 2013, in which he expressed interest in joining Ethereum.
Buterin, who already had mapped out the vision, replied that he was already halfway there and welcomed him on board.
Wood spent the following three years working on Ethereum, serving as chief technology officer for the Ethereum Foundation.
During that time, he invented Solidity, the programming language that powers Ethereum smart contracts.
He left Ethereum in 2016 for several reasons, including the “political realities of human organizations with a lot of money at stake,” but mainly because he feels more at home “building stuff rather than maintaining stuff.”
Wood launched ETHCore shortly after leaving, which is now known as the blockchain technology firm, Parity Technologies. Not long after, he went on to launch the proof-of-stake blockchain network Polkadot, and, three years later, Kusama, an experimental blockchain platform for Polkadot.
And if you’re still not familiar with any of those projects, here’s one you’ve probably heard of…”Web3.” He coined that term for the evolution of the internet back in 2014.
He admits the thought of recognition crosses his mind occasionally, but says it’s a common tension for people with a philosopher’s mindset.
“They think a lot, and they come up with ideas, but at the end of the day, they also sort of feel the need for recognition,” he says.
He says it is a way of thinking that often leaves people torn between sharing visions. Wood explains this philosopher mindset makes people hold back their ideas and sometimes worry others might use them without giving credit.
He says it can also leave you stuck on the idea that someone else is using your idea, which can weigh on your mind. “Not become bitter, that’s not quite the right word, that’s too much of a strong one,” he explains.
His internal tug-of-war over recognition may trace back to the tendency of people in small towns to try and cut down tall poppies. Wood was born in Lancaster, an English town of fewer than 60,000 residents.
There, he attended a prestigious grammar school before studying at the University of York, where he earned a Master’s in Computer Systems and Software Engineering.
Fittingly for someone who has pioneered so much in the industry, Wood also completed a PhD, with a thesis titled “Content-based visualization to aid common navigation of musical audio.”
Even at industry conferences, Wood is in two minds about recognition.
“When I go to conferences, I tend to enjoy going to the ones where I am unannounced and I’m just hanging out, right?” he says.
“Especially ones where people don’t know who I am, yeah, because then it’s kind of fun,” he says.
He also doesn’t like just presenting to anyone and everyone at conferences. “I’m keen that the audience is right, and the cryptocurrency audience is not generally the one that I am keen to address,” he says.
His reluctance stems in part from what he sees as a broader problem within the space. He previously said in an interview in April that there are a “lot of hype driven projects out there in the crypto world and not that many are doing legit work.”
Wood is far more interested in discussing privacy, technology, and individual rights, and how they intersect with online, digital, and decentralized social systems.
“I generally dislike speaking at conferences, because it tends to, I don’t know, poison the water a little,” he says.
While he enjoys socializing, he says that in his CEO mindset, he’s always in full product mode.
Wood’s disinterest in recognition extends even to the price of ETH and the other cryptocurrencies behind the projects he launched, including Polkadot.
“I’m not a trader, and I don’t look at the markets,” he says with passion. “I don’t care about the markets. Yeah, we have enough money that we can manage for some years to come yet,” he explains.
He just doesn’t care, even when Ethereum was at rock bottom earlier this year and everyone was questioning what its narrative was all about.
“My focus is on the products we’re building. I don’t have time to look too much into whether Ethereum will be able to on-ramp Merrill Lynch bankers,” he says, adding:
“I don’t really care about what people are saying about things, because they’re mostly fucking idiots.”
There’s no question Wood is exceptionally smart, but he admits that after Ethereum, he initially felt the pressure to match its success in his following projects.
“Not anymore, but yes, before definitely,” Wood says. So, after all that Wood has already invented, you might think it’s time to relax. Not a chance.
Most recently, on Aug. 13, Wood announced he would resume his role as CEO for Parity Technologies.
As mentioned above, Wood co-founded the firm alongside Aeron Buchanan, TJ Saw, Ken Kappler and Jutta Steiner as ETHCore in 2016, but stepped down as CEO in 2022 to focus on protocol development.
Now he is back, as a man on a mission. Wood describes Parity as “a laser-focused engineering company of about 200 people.”
“That’s probably going to grow a little bit in the coming months, but not too fast, because we want the people that are both great and ideologically aligned,” he says.
Parity’s mission is to build core components for the decentralized web.
Wood says his approach this time is “rather different,” as opposed to the early projects he built.
“I was never in soldier mode when building Ethereum, or if I was, it came out on a helpful point, only very briefly,” he says.
“I know another founder who would agree with that,” he laughs.
He’s focused on growing the team, but his hiring standards are extremely strict.
“They must love their job,” he declares. “They must love the idea of working at Parity, which is to say, what they’re building is right and is needed for the world,” he adds.
“Makes the world a better place. It makes them think it’s something that they would build anyway, if they were given the choice. That’s crucial, and it means they like the company.”
Wood has two major priorities for Parity in the near term, one focused on the team internally, and one aimed at the outside world.
“I’m wanting to make a kind of underpinning of what it is that we’re doing, so that people, firstly within Parity, are clear and are ideologically aligned, and if they don’t like it, like, fuck off,” he says.
“People outside of Parity understand why they should be using this rather than other bullshit that calls themselves Web3, but it’s just centralized and run by a regular, you know, Facebook, Zuckerberg, Sam Altman,” he says.
