Gavin James Wood is an English computer scientist, a co-founder of

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-s ...

, and creator of Polkadot and Kusama.

Early life

Wood was born in Lancaster,

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. He attended the

Lancaster Royal Grammar School Lancaster Royal Grammar School (LRGS) is an 11–18 boys grammar school in Lancaster, England, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Old students belong to The Old Lancastrians. The school's sixth form opened to girls in 2019. LRGS is also in the Unit ...

. He graduated from the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

with a

Master of Engineering A Master of Engineering (abbreviated MEng, ME, M.E. or M.Eng.) is a Professional degree, professional master's degree in the field of engineering. International variations Australia In Australia, the Master of Engineering degree is a research ...

(MEng) in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 2002 and completed his PhD entitled "Content-based visualization to aid common navigation of musical audio" in 2005.

Career

Before working on

, Wood was a research scientist at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. He was one of the founders of the Ethereum blockchain, which he has described as "one computer for the entire planet," with

Vitalik Buterin Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin (; born 31 January 1994), better known as Vitalik Buterin (), is a Canadian computer programmer and co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding ''Bitcoin Ma ...

, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin during 2013–2014. Wood proposed and helped develop Solidity, a programming language for writing smart contracts. He also released the paper defining the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the

runtime system In computer programming, a runtime system or runtime environment is a sub-system that exists in the computer where a program is created, as well as in the computers where the program is intended to be run. The name comes from the compile time ...

for

smart contract A smart contract is a computer program or a Transaction Protocol Data Unit, transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objective ...

s in Ethereum, in 2014. He also served as the Ethereum Foundation's first chief technology officer. Wood left the Ethereum Foundation in January 2016. Wood founded Parity Technologies (formerly Ethcore), which developed a client for the Ethereum network and creates software for companies using blockchain technology, with Jutta Steiner, who also previously worked at the Ethereum Foundation. The company released the Parity Ethereum software client, written in

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH) ...

, in early 2016. He held the title of chief web officer at Parity in 2018. He founded the Web3 Foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on decentralized internet infrastructure and technology, starting with the Polkadot network.

Charity

Amid

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

Wood donated $5.8 million in cryptocurrency to support

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

Publications

*''Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger'' *''Polkadot: Vision for a Heterogenous Multi-Chain Framework''Polkadot White Paper
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Gavin Living people British technology company founders People educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School Alumni of the University of York People associated with Ethereum People from Lancaster, Lancashire British chief technology officers Year of birth missing (living people)