Polkadot Co-Founder Gavin Wood Steps Down From CEO Role at Blockchain's Builder

Björn Wagner will now helm Polkadot's key backer, Parity Technologies.

By Danny Nelson

Oct 21, 2022 at 3:44 p.m. UTC

Updated Oct 21, 2022 at 6:38 p.m. UTC

CDCROP: Polkadot founder Gavin Wood — Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood (Parity Technologies)

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's deputy business editor. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL.

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Gavin Wood is shaking off his CEO title at Parity Technologies, the key backer supporting the Polkadot ecosystem.

Wood, a longtime crypto developer who co-founded Polkadot after exiting the Ethereum Foundation in 2015, will remain a majority shareholder in Parity Technologies. His co-founder, Björn Wagner, will become the new CEO.

The Polkadot ecosystem is a network of blockchains running in parallel - known as 'parachains' - with a central relay chain which handles the governance of the system of blockchains. Polkadot was designed by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood as a smarter approach to blockchain scaling, interoperability and tokenomics and has consistently been within the top ten so-called layer 1 blockchains.

In a statement shared with CoinDesk, Wood said he will focus on making Polkadot "more relevant to large swathes of the population" in his new role as Chief Architect.

"This will begin by helping the community design and build several interesting chain-integrated social primitives which I think are crucial for us to deliver a true Web3 platform."

Bloomberg first reported Wood's departure.

UPDATE (10/21/2022 16:32 UTC) Adds comment from representative.

UPDATE (10/21/2022 18:38 UTC) Adds context on Polkadot.

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