Gavin Wood's "Multiverse": founder, scientist, experimenter, NowDJ Wasabi.
原文標題：《Gavin Wood on why Ethereum remains ‘unchanged,’ Polkadot, and moonlighting as a DJ》
By Liam Kelly, DL News
Compiled by: Lyric, ChainCatcher ChainCatcher
Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood spoke to DL News as Polkadot plummeted 50%.
Polkadot is facing a backlash from users after investing heavily in marketing.
Gavin Wood talks about his alter ego - as a DJ.
Earlier this year, Polkadot students had a party after finishing a five-week developer boot camp in Hong Kong. At the graduation ceremony, members of the DeFi network saw a familiar face take his place behind the DJ booth – Gavin Wood, co-founder of Polkadot and one of the masterminds of Ethereum.
After a decade of playing a key role in building the DeFi ecosystem, 44-year-old Gavin Wood is returning to his original passion, music. "If you see anything written about DJ Wasabi, that's me," Wood told DL News.
looking for new directions
His move comes as Polkadot has struggled to find a breakthrough.
Parity Technologies, the company building the Polkadot network, laid off nearly a third of its 385 employees in 2023 due to a lack of funds, according to employees. Polkadot was once one of the top ten cryptocurrency projects by token value. Its DOT token is down 50% this year, while ETH is up 5% and rival Cardano is down 45%.
In July, Polkadot faced more criticism, with critics slamming its decision to spend $87 million in the first half of the year. Nearly half of that was spent on marketing efforts, including $400,000 spent on an animated Polkadot logo on cryptocurrency website CoinMarketCap. Seun Lanlege, a former core developer at Parity, said on
A Parity representative said the marketing fees stem from the project's governance system. “The spending on the marketing program is a direct result of on-chain financial spending as voted on by the community,” the representative told DL News.
With Wood transitioning into DJing, many in DeFi may wonder if he’s straying from his day job. Although Wood is Parity's lead designer, he dismissed such concerns and downplayed his role in the project. "My position is much lower," he said.
"I am a scientist"
Wood spoke to DL News at the Funkhaus in Berlin during the Web3 Summit in August. Here, Wood shares his thoughts on blockchain design and technology.
"I want to experiment. I'm a researcher, a scientist, a scholar, and curiosity is my main driving force here." He said: "The biggest thing for Polkadot is that Ethereum is in a certain place. It has stagnated to a certain extent.”
In fact, Wood has a knack for pursuing off-the-beaten-path adventures. He plans to launch a "personality" system later this year that will tattoo machine-generated QR code-like patterns on people's bodies.
Wood began his career at the intersection of computer science and music.
In 2005, Wood completed a five-year PhD program at the University of York, studying how computers listen to music. He also created visual illustrations of the music the machine heard. His paper showed what Dave Brubeck's jazz classic "Take Five" would look like to a computer.
Wood has also been involved in technology projects. He has worked as a Microsoft researcher and taught geometry at a Catholic school in Italy. He sold lighting systems to London nightclubs and bars, then tried launching a Microsoft Word plug-in to automate the tedious work of lawyers.
Soon after, he met Vitalik Buterin, Jeffrey Wilcke, and Charles Hoskinson, who were developing Ethereum. For Wood, Ethereum was essentially a weekend project he worked on in early 2010 while developing a Word plug-in.
Inventing Ethereum
He wrote one of the first Ethereum clients in the C++ programming language, a software application that allows developers to interact with the blockchain. Wood helped invent Solidity, Ethereum’s programming language, and co-authored the Ethereum Yellow Paper, the first document to formally describe the purpose and workings of the Ethereum network.
“I also bring more of a design and engineering side to the table, which is like an almost artistic nature, I would say,” he told DL News.
Although Wood solidified his position in the cryptocurrency space by co-creating the blockchain system that became the cornerstone of decentralized finance, he felt that Ethereum lacked vitality.
“The Ethereum protocol is basically unchanged from the vision that Vitalik and I laid out in 2014,” he said.
In 2016, Wood struck out on his own and co-founded Polkadot with Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban. The idea is to create a more efficient and affordable network to support dApps and smart contracts.
“The biggest thing for Polkadot is that Ethereum has kind of stagnated,” he said. “I want to keep growing.”
The project raised $144 million in 2017 through an initial coin offering — a type of cryptocurrency crowdfunding in which people put in real money in exchange for the network’s native token. It started officially producing blocks in 2020. Amid the 2021 craze, DOT became a top ten cryptocurrency as its total value jumped to $54 billion.
Improve "bulky" cross-chain
He also launched the blockchain to solve key bottlenecks facing Ethereum. That is, layer 2 blockchains (mini-blockchains that aggregate transactions into low-cost proofs and then send them to Ethereum), which are now common on Ethereum.
Polkadot has introduced similar designs called parachains since day one. Any project that chooses to build on Polkadot and launch its own parachain can easily interact with other Polkadot-based projects. For layer 2 networks based on Ethereum, users must interact with clunky cross-chain bridges to move funds between networks.
Wood said Polkadot is closer to Ethereum’s early vision. "Back when all fields were still blank, the second-layer network was no longer a dream. The dream promoted by Ethereum core developers five years ago looked a bit like Polkadot."
"I am an experimenter"
In April this year, he further built on this vision with an upgraded version of Polkadot called JAM (Join-Accumalate Machine). JAM will allow anyone to build a parachain, rather than having builders auction a parachain. This upgrade isn't just technical. It also comes as Polkadot attempts to revive its 2021 glory.
But escaping DeFi’s long-standing woes won’t be easy. Not only did Parity need to lay off a large number of employees because of exorbitant executive pay, but the layoffs were handled awkwardly, employees said. The company announced the layoffs a week before traveling to Mallorca, but did not disclose specific layoffs.
One Parity employee called it "a surreal, sick joke." Wood skipped the beach vacation, leaving many angry and confused. Parity completed its reorganization in July and is currently recruiting new employees. A Parity representative said its job posting lists 11 open positions.
Now, Wood's next project may attract attention again, which he calls "proof-of-ink." Speaking at the Web3 Summit, Wood explained how the Polkadot blockchain can produce unique tattoo designs. These patterns can prove that a person is who they say they are online without revealing other information. It seems possible that so-called Sybil attacks, in which a user creates multiple identities, are a common problem in cryptocurrencies.
Wood showed off a QR code on his bicep. He's also working on other designs before launching in late 2024. “I really don’t want this to be said to be some kind of tattoo identification system.” The practice of tattooing identification marks on the skin can cause strong reactions, especially in a place like Germany. Wood bristled at the implication.
"I spent a long time saying that this is not about identification," he told DL News. "This is about personality. I spent a long time saying that it's about privacy, which is using strong encryption to ensure privacy. I really don't I hope someone says this is a tattoo recognition system, because that’s completely misleading.”
The project shows how Wood always follows his instincts no matter where it leads him, from getting crypto-related tattoos to performing music as DJ Wasabi.
"For me, unless it's something novel, it's just not worth doing," he said. "I'm an experimenter."
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