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Gavin Wood: A Biography

By Stephen Carter

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Reviewed by: Stephen Carter

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Galvin Wood

Gavin Wood is a computer scientist and a crypto entrepreneur. He is one of the most brilliant crypto minds out there and the co-founder of multiple crypto platforms that we see today.

Polkadot, operating as both a cryptocurrency and a blockchain platform, co-founded by him, is predicted to have price surges.

There are also hints that Polkadot 2.0 may become the key to the DOT’s chart breakouts. Come, let us read more about him and his contributions.

Who Is Gavin Wood?

Galvin Wood

Gavin Wood is the co-founder of Ethereum and the creator and co-founder of Polkadot and Kusama. He describes himself as a free trust technologist and the founder of these three, plus Parity and Web3 Foundation. Previously, he was the CTO of the Ethereum Foundation.

Currently, he is the CWO and Chairman of Parity Technologies. He authored the Ethereum Yellow Paper and Polkadot White Paper. His publications are ‘Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger’ and ‘Polkadot: Vision for a Heterogenous Multi-Chain Framework’.

Gavin Wood also has multiple other key contributions such as the board game, Milton Keynes; a plugin-based super slick audio analysis and visualization environment, the Noted; the Localised Proportional Representation voting system, and the Fractal Playground.

Co-founding Ethereum is considered as one of the biggest milestones in his life. Initially, when he read the White Paper of Bitcoin back in 2011 he was not much interested.

He later said that when he first visited the concept he focused too much on the currency aspect rather than focusing on the technology aspect.

However, in 2013, he revisited Bitcoin and instantly realized the vast possibilities in game theory and ICT. He got introduced to Vitalik Buterin through a mutual friend, which eventually led to the birth of Ethereum.

He served as the CTO of Ethereum for two years and later left it. What followed his departure from Ethereum was the founding of Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company and a global collective of tech experts working together to open source creative commons, web 3 projects, and more.

Later in 2016 Wood published the white paper of Polkadot. In the upcoming year, it raised more than 144.3 million US dollars in its ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

Before his crypto entry, he worked as a Microsoft Research consultant.

What Is Web3 Foundation And Kusama?

Web3 Foundation is a non-profit organization funded by Gavin Wood in 2017 that funds the research and development of dApps.

Wood is its president and his foundation has granted 300+ awards to many Web 3 projects across the globe.

Kusama was established by Wood in 2019, as an experimental development platform. It is a scalable network of specialized blockchains and offers a sandbox environment to developers who are trying to rapidly build and also test their creations before they deploy them on Polkadot.

Gavin Wood: Net Worth

As per the latest reports, Gavin Wood’s net worth in 2024 is estimated to be around 500 million US dollars. A major part of his wealth comes from his crypto ventures.

Therefore, we can not estimate a stable amount as his net worth as it keeps on varying with the crypto market trends, and the price fluctuations.

Gavin Wood: Whereabouts And More

Gavin Wood was born in the UK, in Lancaster, England. Wood attended the Lancaster Royal Grammar School. He pursued a Master of Engineering in Computer Systems and Software Engineering from the University of York and graduated in 2002.

Later in 2005, he completed his PhD. His doctoral dissertation was titled ‘Content-based Visualisation To Aid Common Navigation Of Musical Audio

Wood is interested in snowboarding, Taekwon-do, and photography.

Closing Thoughts

Gavin Wood is one the pioneers in the field of crypto technology. His journey seems to be inspiring for all the tech and crypto enthusiasts out there.

You can follow him on various social media platforms where he shares relevant information and crypto insights. Gavin Wood has a website that you can visit to learn more about him. Wood was not someone who was enthusiastic about crypts from the beginning itself.

However, his love and passion for technology helped to identify the potential possibilities in the field of crypto. Currently, he is one of the world’s top crypto minds.

Stephen Carter

Stephen Carter is a software technology expert. He writes about market research on various hot topics like cryptocurrencies, explaining how they started. He's good at making complicated tech ideas easy to understand for everyone.

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