Gavin Wood's "Multiverse": Founder, Scientist, Experimenter, Now DJ Wasabi.

Title: "Gavin Wood on why Ethereum remains' unchanged, 'Polkadot, and moonlighting as a DJ" Author: Liam Kelly, DL News Compilation: Lyric, ChainCatcher

Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood was interviewed by DL News as Polkadot plummeted 50%. After investing heavily in marketing, Polkadot is facing strong opposition from users. Gavin Wood talked about his other identity - as a DJ.

Earlier this year, when Polkadot students finished a five week developer training camp in Hong Kong, they welcomed a party. At the graduation ceremony, members of the DeFi network saw a familiar face sitting behind the DJ booth - Gavin Wood, co-founder of Polkadot and one of the planners of Ethereum.

After playing a crucial role in the construction of the DeFi ecosystem for ten years, 44 year old Gavin Wood has begun to rediscover his initial passion - music. Wood told DL News, "If you see any articles related to DJ Wasabi, it's me

Find a new direction

The background of his move is that Polkadot has been striving to find a breakthrough.

According to employees, in 2023, Parity Technologies, the company that built the Polkadot network, laid off nearly one-third of its 385 employees due to funding shortages. Polkadot was once one of the top ten cryptocurrency projects in terms of token value ranking. This year, its DOT token has fallen by 50%, while ETH has risen by 5%, and competitor Cardano has fallen by 45%.

In July of this year, Polkadot faced more criticism, with critics criticizing its decision to spend $87 million in the first half of the year. Nearly half of it was used for marketing activities, including spending $400000 to create an animated version of the Polkadot logo on the cryptocurrency website CoinMarketCap. Seun Langley, former core developer of Parity, said on X, "It's crazy that Polkadot's treasury wasted so much money on wrong marketing

A representative from Parity stated that marketing expenses stem from the project's governance system. The representative told DL News, "The expenditure on marketing plans is a direct result of on chain financial expenditures determined by community voting

As Wood switches to DJ, many DeFi enthusiasts may wonder if he has left his daily job. Although Wood is the chief designer of Parity, he denies such concerns and downplays his role in the project. He said, 'My position is much lower.'

I am a scientist

During the Web3 Summit in August, Wood was interviewed by DL News at Funkhaus in Berlin. Here, Wood shared his views on the design and technology of memory blockchain.

I want to conduct experiments. I am a researcher, a scientist, a scholar, and curiosity is my main driving force here, "he said." The biggest thing for Polkadot is that Ethereum has come to a standstill to some extent

In fact, Wood is very good at pursuing unusual adventures. He plans to launch a "personality" system later this year, which will tattoo machine generated QR code like patterns on people's bodies.

Wood's career began with the fusion of computer science and music.

In 2005, Wood completed a five-year doctoral program at York University, studying how computers listen to music. He also turned the music heard by the machine into visual icons. His paper presents what Dave Brubeck's classic jazz piece 'Take Five' would look like to a computer.

Wood has also been involved in technology projects. He once worked as a Microsoft researcher and also taught geometry at a Catholic school in Italy. He sold lighting systems to nightclubs and bars in London, and then attempted to launch a Microsoft Word plugin to automate the tedious work of lawyers.

Not long 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 while developing the Word plugin in early 2010.

Invented Ethereum

He wrote one of the first Ethereum clients in the C++programming language, which is a software application that allows developers to interact with memory blockchains. Wood helped invent Solidity, the programming language for Ethereum, and co authored the Ethereum Yellow Book, which was the first official document to explain the purpose and operation of the Ethereum network.

He told DL News, "I also brought more design and engineering aspects, and I want to say, it's like an almost artistic nature

Although Wood has become the cornerstone of decentralized finance and solidified his position in the cryptocurrency field by jointly creating a blockchain system, he feels that Ethereum lacks vitality.

He said, "Compared to the vision proposed by Vitalik and me in 2014, the Ethereum protocol has hardly changed

In 2016, Wood established his own business and co founded Polkadot with Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban. The concept is to create a more efficient and affordable network to support dApps and smart contracts.

The biggest thing for Polkadot is that Ethereum has come to a standstill to some extent, "he said." I want to continue developing

The project raised $144 million through its initial token offering in 2017- a cryptocurrency crowdfunding where people invest real money in exchange for the network's native tokens. It officially began producing memory blocks in 2020. In the hype of 2021, its total value soared to $54 billion, making DOT one of the top ten cryptocurrencies.

Improving the 'cumbersome' cross chain

He also introduced a memory blockchain to address the key bottleneck faced by Ethereum. The second layer of memory blockchain (a mini memory blockchain that aggregates transactions into low-cost proofs and sends them to Ethereum) is now very common on Ethereum.

Polkadot introduced a similar design from day one, called parachains. Any project that chooses to build and launch its own parallel chain based on Polkadot can easily interact with other Polkadot based projects. For Ethereum based Layer 2 networks, users must interact with cumbersome cross chain bridges to transfer funds between networks.

Wood stated that Polkadot is closer to Ethereum's early vision. Back when all fields were still blank, layer 2 networks were no longer a dream. The dream promoted by Ethereum core developers five years ago looks a bit like Polkadot

I am an experimenter

In April of this year, he further built this vision through an upgraded version of Polkadot called JAM (Join Accumalate Machine). JAM will enable anyone to build a parallel chain, rather than having builders auction off a parallel chain. This upgrade is not just about technology. Its launch also comes at a time when Polkadot is attempting to revive the glory of 2021.

However, getting rid of the long-standing troubles of DeFi is not an easy task. Employees stated that due to high executive compensation, Parity not only needs to lay off a large number of employees, but also handles the layoffs awkwardly. At that time, the company announced layoffs a week before heading to Mallorca, but did not disclose the specific layoffs.

A Parity employee referred to it as' a surreal, prank joke '. Wood did not participate in the beach vacation, which left many people feeling angry and confused. In July, Parity completed its restructuring and is currently recruiting new employees. A representative of Parity said that its recruitment information column listed 11 vacant positions.

Now, Wood's next project may once again attract people's attention, which he calls' proof of ink '. At the Web3 Summit, Wood explained how Polkadot's memory blockchain generates unique tattoo patterns. These patterns can prove that a person is the person they claim to be online without revealing any other information. It seems that Sybil attacks (where a user creates multiple identities) are a common issue that can be addressed in cryptocurrency.

Wood displayed the QR code on his biceps. Before its launch at the end of 2024, he was still researching other designs. I really don't want this to be spread as some kind of tattoo recognition system. The practice of tattooing identification on the skin may cause strong reactions, especially in places like Germany. Wood was angry at this suggestion.

I spent a long time emphasizing that this has nothing to do with identity recognition, "he told DL News." It's about personality. I spent a long time emphasizing privacy, which is using powerful encryption technology to ensure privacy. I really don't want anyone to say this is a tattoo recognition system because it's completely misleading

This project demonstrates how Wood always follows his intuition, no matter where it leads him, from tattoos related to encryption to performing music as DJ Wasabi.

For me, it's not worth doing this unless it's novel, "he said." I'm an experimenter

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