'I started writing Ethereum code in December when I had only 500 pounds left, and my rent was exactly 500 pounds a month. At that time, I had already founded two startups, but neither was progressing well. I even considered getting a job at a bank. And it was at this moment that he gave me 1000 pounds a month to continue working on Ethereum. I wanted to see if this white paper could actually be realized, so I started writing code. A few months later, I became a co-founder of Ethereum.'
Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, creator of Polkadot, and a visionary for Web3. In a three-hour interview last week, he revealed the mysteries of the future of blockchain technology. PolkaWorld will release it in several parts, and this article is the first part!
Before we formally begin, let's take a look at some of the great insights and conversations!
You created the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and founded Polkadot. In your opinion, what is Ethereum's greatest achievement to date? - Ethereum is the project that has created the most millionaires in history.
So how is a great idea born? - A good idea is one where you can clearly see the path to realization.
The real view on meme coins? - Pure bullshit.
What is Polkadot's greatest achievement? - Achieving secure sharded blockchain.
So what is Polkadot's biggest challenge right now? - Its sharding design.
Your childhood seems not easy; can you talk more about it? - I lived with my single mom since I was young, and her husband was very violent. I clearly remember that period, filled with a sense of abandonment. This made me more appreciative of having a safe environment now.
People often say, 'Being too ahead equals being wrong.' As an inventor, you always foresee trends very early. Have you ever experienced misunderstandings or even setbacks because you were 'too ahead'? - Did Howard Marks really say that?
Please continue reading and enjoy the great content brought by Gavin!
Starting with small talk
Kevin: Thank you very much for accepting this interview, Gavin. Are you drinking Japanese whiskey now?
Gavin: Yes, Yamazaki 12 years.
Kevin: I heard you like whiskey and Japanese culture.
Gavin: Yes! Cheers! Kampai!
Kevin: Is Kampai Japanese? I thought that was a Chinese expression.
Gavin: Kampai is the Japanese word for cheers.
Kevin: Do you speak Japanese?
Gavin: No, but knowing some basic terms can help.
Kevin: Do you live in Japan?
Gavin: I currently have a house in Japan.
Kevin: Why?
Gavin: Just because I like the culture here. It might not be suitable to live here all year round, but Japanese culture is really unique, and living here is very interesting.
Kevin: What do you like about Japanese culture?
Gavin: Actually, it's very different from other places in Asia. The service is really great, and all the details are thoughtfully considered; this is very obvious. It's completely different from the UK.
Kevin: What do you think of the UK?
Gavin: You know, I grew up here, I'm British. So for me, it's a kind of... not necessarily a strong desire to spend all my time here, but I have a house in Cambridge, and I enjoy living here. I also really like certain elements of British culture.
Kevin: For example?
Gavin: For example, British Indian curry is fantastic. I love traditional pubs, ales, and cheese. Also, pies are always delicious. And fish and chips, Sunday roasts, are also very good. The UK is one of the countries that values etiquette quite a bit, which I appreciate.
Kevin: Yes, but for someone like me, if you're not a native British, especially if English is not your mother tongue, like I come from Switzerland, it can sometimes be hard to really understand what Brits mean, especially their sense of humor, right? British humor is really hard to grasp and quite special.
Gavin: Yes, I think humor is a great way to communicate. You often find that jokes contain a lot of meaning. In some places, humor has become part of communication, like using humor to express meaning slightly indirectly or to find a common ground that everyone can relate to rather than making a statement directly. It’s a very natural way of communicating.
Kevin: Someone told me Japan is like that too. I heard that people from Osaka (or maybe Kyoto, but definitely not Tokyo) are more laid-back and have a better sense of humor.
Gavin: Yes, it's very different from the feeling of growing up in Tokyo and then going to those places. In Tokyo, communication is usually more formal, while in Osaka, people naturally like to joke, and humor becomes part of their communication. And when one person is used to communicating with humor while another is not, the difference becomes quite evident.
Kevin: Do you think humor is more related to culture or a person's level of intelligence? For example, in understanding humor?
Gavin: I think humor largely relies on shared cognitive points, shared perceptions, and a common understanding of the world. So it's not necessarily directly linked to intelligence. But to some extent, intelligence does serve as a tool to create humor and establish resonance between the two parties in a dialogue.
From what I understand, I have also thought a bit about humor. Humor is usually based on the idea that when you say something or do an action, the target audience (the interlocutor) interprets it in two ways, while other bystanders might only interpret it in one way. This hidden interpretation is precisely what generates a sense of humor.
It feels interesting because the target audience realizes they can interpret the statement in two ways and knows that others can only interpret it in one way. At the same time, they also know that the speaker is aware of this. Therefore, a special, exclusive understanding forms between the two parties in the dialogue, which others cannot participate in. This unique sense of resonance is the essence of humor.
Gavin's childhood
Kevin: Do you like to analyze many things?
Gavin: Of course.
Kevin: Who are you?
Gavin: This is a question the Borg ask Duran in (Babylon 5), and that episode spent the entire episode answering it.
Kevin: So I will start with this question too.
Gavin: However, I prefer another question: 'What do you want?' This is the question the shadow people ask Duran.
As for 'Who am I?' I don't know, I consider myself a bit of a free spirit. I try to avoid labeling myself because usually the way to define 'who you are' is based on your relationship with the surrounding world, people, and institutions. I don't like to answer this question with simple answers because if people hear it, they tend to over-interpret it, which is not what I really want to convey. Broadly speaking, 'who a person is' cannot be summarized in one or two sentences. This is something that can only be gradually felt through observing a person's words and actions, or in interviews like this one.
Kevin: What is your mission?
Gavin: What drives me? This question, I don't know, there are several different factors, and there are some things I want to achieve. For example, happiness, that should be a pretty good goal. Also, satisfaction, being a good father. And a sense of responsibility — a personal mission regarding some of the things I am involved in. Besides that, there are some childhood dreams, things I know will make me happy, and might also make others happy, which tend to be in the arts, music, and similar fields.
Kevin: You mentioned childhood dreams. A few months ago, I was chatting with Kia Wong from Alliance DAO on a podcast, and they believe that two traits are crucial when looking for star founders in the crypto space of tomorrow. The first is a certain level of 'autistic tendencies,' which helps people think independently; the second is a form of childhood trauma that drives a sense of 'I need to prove something to the world.' As a very successful founder in the crypto space, do you identify with either of these traits or both?
Gavin: I'm not qualified to diagnose myself with 'autistic tendencies.' However, my childhood was indeed not easy. So, I think I can perhaps relate to the idea of 'childhood trauma.'
Kevin: Would you like to talk a bit more about childhood trauma?
Gavin: I grew up in a single-parent household with only my mother around. This was largely her choice. But she had a violent husband at the time, who was also my father, and this lasted for some time. I don't remember being beaten, but I have very vivid memories of that period of life, mainly a sense of abandonment. I don't know if that counts as some form of trauma, nor am I sure what type of trauma it specifically belongs to. But I think it has given me a particularly deep appreciation for a 'safe environment.'
Kevin: More and more people are trying to understand the relationship between themselves and their childhood. I have discussed this topic a lot with people like Jesse Pollack and Mike Novogratz. Many people will go through some form of psychotherapy to understand the origins of their behavioral patterns. It's not just about explaining, 'Oh, that's why I do this,' but more about self-improvement because we all want to be better. Have you ever done something similar, like feeling that your childhood helped you in some ways but maybe not in others, and you want to learn more about yourself?
Gavin: As you mentioned before, I am indeed someone who enjoys thinking and analyzing things. So I have thought deeply about the experiences of this stage of my life and how these experiences might influence my current way of thinking or interpersonal interactions. But if you ask me if I have undergone specific psychotherapy or hypnosis? No.
Where do all those great ideas come from?
Kevin: You are a co-founder of Ethereum and created the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the Solidity programming language, providing tools for developers to build smart contracts on Ethereum. You also founded Polkadot. How did you come up with these big ideas?
Gavin: I don't know either. I think ideas just come out on their own.
Kevin: Interesting. So you don't need to consciously do anything; they just come?
Gavin: Yes.
Kevin: So do you start with goals or plans first?
Gavin: No.
Kevin: Or did you wake up one day and suddenly think, 'This is what I want to do'?
Gavin: You could say that. Although saying 'must do' might be a bit of an exaggeration. But indeed, one day, while I was thinking about some things, like taking a walk or while showering, or perhaps just casually pondering, for some reason, the 'puzzle pieces' of these ideas started to come together.
Essentially, it’s not like some people, like Elon Musk, who might explicitly decide, 'I want to go to Mars,' and then start backtracking what needs to be done: developing batteries, researching rocket science, then developing this, that, setting a clear roadmap, whether written in the mind or on paper, and then executing them one by one. For me, this approach doesn't suit my style.
My approach tends to lean towards incremental innovation. This doesn't mean I avoid making any significant changes, but rather that I look for combinations of what I already know, what has been proven effective, and components I can imagine exist or actually do exist, to see if I can arrive at a result that seems meaningful and useful. And that result, at least in my view, has not been well realized before.
Kevin: I read a book written by a famous surgeon and the author of Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Malt. This book, Psycho-Cybernetics, actually explains some parts of the creative process. He mentioned that most creativity actually comes from the subconscious. He said that when you see something clearly in your mind, your inner creative success mechanism takes over and does it better than you could through conscious effort or willpower. So, how much of major ideas like EVM or any other big ideas come from your conscious thinking? And how much comes from having an idea, setting some goals, and then relaxing to let the subconscious do the work?
Gavin: In my view, an 'idea' is not that I can casually think of a vision like 'eradicating world hunger,' and then I sleep, letting my brain or subconscious do the work. Something will happen the next morning; it won't, right?
Because if the 'idea' you are talking about is a vision or a high-level goal, then it is not a 'real idea' in the true sense. It could be a concept for a movie, but it is not that kind of 'idea' in an engineering sense. Therefore, I do not fully agree that the subconscious can greatly assist in this regard.
I believe ideas must be constrained by practical feasibility.
If you don't have the resources to solve hunger issues, then focusing on an idea of 'eradicating hunger' doesn't make much sense. Of course, you might say, 'We can take an incremental approach, first do this, then that.' But this is more like a top-down approach, starting from the end goal and then deducing how to achieve it. I feel this approach is more like Elon Musk's style. He has immense wealth; I don't know if he is worth hundreds of billions or thousands of billions now, but he can say directly like a US president or chairman of the Saudi National Fund, 'Okay, I want to build a city there' or 'I'm going to spend 3 billion dollars to eradicate malaria somewhere.' And then solve the problem using a very programmed, rational, and unemotional corporate operational manner, assessing whether resources are sufficient to achieve the goal. But as I said, this is not an 'idea'; it's just an 'outcome.'
A true 'idea' is that you have a path, a way to realize something. You may not know the exact details, but you know it is positive, possibly useful, and may help the world. You also believe that no one has thought of such an invention or that no one has tried to combine existing foundational elements in this way to create something new.
I think that is the real meaning behind most people's discussions of 'inventors having an idea.' They refer to the recombination of basic elements.
Being too ahead equals being wrong? Did Gavin experience misunderstandings?
Kevin: You mean combining these things and believing it will be useful to the world, right? But the problem with that is that for someone like an inventor, people may not understand you at all for a while, or even a long time, right? I remember Howard Marks seemingly said, 'Being too ahead equals being wrong.' As an inventor, you always capture trends early. How many setbacks have you experienced in your life due to acting too early or being completely misunderstood?
Gavin: There might be quite a few, but I'm not sure. Can I really determine whether others misunderstood my meaning? Is the difference between them misunderstanding you, ignoring you, or just because they aren't smart enough to grasp your concept almost at all, or even forever, clear? I don't know. I suspect it is, but to some extent, I agree with the idea that being too ahead of your time equals being wrong. But did Howard Marks really say that? It doesn't sound like his style.
Kevin: I'll confirm that later, haha
Gavin: However, yes, I think if you want to build something that can immediately create value for the world, you must explain it in terms that the world already understands. That’s why most disruptive inventions are usually initially applied to a very simple, even childish use case. A classic example is the internet was initially used to send emails. For instance, 'Okay, now you can send messages, and these messages no longer take a day to deliver; instead, they can be delivered in a few minutes — assuming people check their inbox every few minutes.'
The impact of the internet on the world was immense later on, and today, the role of email accounts for only a small part of the internet's overall impact. But at that time, it was necessary because people understood mail, so they could understand that if the speed of information transfer increased by an order of magnitude, or even two or three orders, it was clearly an improvement.
So, I would agree on this point: you need to explain your ideas in terms that the market or your target audience can understand.
Of course, the issue is that sometimes building something is much easier than figuring out its exact use.
Kevin: Isn't that the problem most entrepreneurs face? They usually create a product and then look for a target audience instead of the reverse. They should ask themselves, 'Am I solving problems for people?' But you could also argue that those who provide solutions to existing problems are actually solving smaller issues than a completely new invention.
Gavin: Yes, usually that way. And many times, they are constraining themselves. They limit their wisdom and thinking space because they have already defined a clear scope. For instance, they only focus on making a car go faster or consume less fuel. Maybe they could think of making the car fly, but it doesn't matter because their focus is just on reducing fuel consumption.
So I agree that if you have predetermined outcomes before starting to truly think about how to achieve your goals, you may only be able to solve smaller problems.
If your perspective is broader, and you are a bit more 'hands-off' about the specific results you want to achieve, like just trying to find ways to make things freer, more efficient, and faster, then you might find some more revolutionary and substantive solutions more quickly.
Kevin: When do you think you were misunderstood the most? You mentioned that this might have happened many times, right?
Gavin: Well, I think it's quite common when doing JAM. This is a new protocol I am working on. But I think it's normal because it is indeed a complex protocol, and its operational method is very different from previous ones. Understanding what makes it different and why it’s better isn't always easy. Much of this is because people may not really understand the limitations of existing methods. This is a huge issue in the development of cutting-edge technology.
Even practitioners do not always clearly recognize the state of technology or that the current cutting edge is not optimal. You can only understand more clearly why a certain solution might be effective when you deeply analyze and truly understand the existing problem.
Deep understanding of knowledge is key to driving major breakthroughs.
Kevin: So how did you start? Because in the classical approach, you identify a problem and then go to solve that problem. But if your idea is a bit more abstract, how do you start?
Gavin: If you start with 'I have this problem, and I want to find a solution,' I think that applies to smaller, incremental issues.
For larger problems, you might need to be very lucky to stumble upon a solution. Or you can be like Bill Gates and say, 'I will put my substantial wealth into this problem.' But assuming you are neither extremely lucky nor extremely wealthy, you may just start tackling small problems. Because there are many more small problems than big ones, and they are more segmented and detailed, thus fewer people are likely to focus on them. This means these problems may be easier to solve, easier for you to discover and utilize.
So, I think this 'top-down, define the outcome first' approach is more suitable for small problems, not big ones, unless you have extremely rich resources or extreme luck.
That's why I say you should start from the current state and analyze the existing 'components.'
When I say 'components,' I mean very abstract concepts, not just things that can literally be used directly, such as Rust programming language, an Android phone, or a CPU. It also includes the following:
• Various fields of mathematics
• Different branches of engineering
• Various cognitions of humanity about the world
• Products and services already sold in the market
• Projects that have already been deployed
• Open-source software
All of these can be seen as 'components' that you can leverage when building something. By combining these components, along with some novelty or creativity, you can build something useful that might be used to solve one or more problems. I think that is the essence of creation.
You can easily achieve this at a lower level. For example, I can write a new program that does some pairing matching and create a trading robot with this program, which might soon achieve a certain level of success. This is solving a relatively small problem.
Academic research usually operates at higher levels of abstraction. Scholars still try to solve problems by recombining ideas, adding a bit of knowledge-based creativity and innovation, but they are trying to solve some 'larger' issues (although these issues may not always be widely understood, nor necessarily seem very important). These issues aren't necessarily big problems that many people are concerned about, nor are they very practical issues that need to be solved. However, even so, they are still creating more useful human knowledge, which in itself is meaningful.
There are many classic examples, like some theoretical studies from the early 20th century that gave birth to laser theory, and lasers were eventually used to manufacture CDs. Without these theoretical studies, CDs could not have been invented. But at the time these studies were completed, no one knew what they would be useful for. For a long time, even decades, they were almost 'useless.' But when they were finally applied, they sparked a revolution in audio technology.
I'm not saying you should lock yourself in an ivory tower and only do highly abstract, seemingly purely theoretical things. What I want to express is that there is a spectrum between immediately practical things and things that seem purely theoretical. And I myself probably sit somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
I'm trying to propose some new engineering understandings that don’t say 'deploy it tomorrow and see a 10% increase in transaction volume.' Instead, I hope that, when applied correctly, it could become part of the next generation of systems, leading to a 1000% or even a million percent increase in transaction volume.
Of course, you can't be completely sure of this because you're not merely pursuing a specific outcome. Instead, you are pursuing a deep understanding of knowledge. I believe that a better understanding of knowledge can lead to great results, and not just one great result, but it might give rise to multiple significant outcomes.
