# Gavin Wood

> Gavin Wood is a British computer scientist, Ethereum co-founder and former CTO, Parity Technologies co-founder and CEO, and creator of Polkadot and Kusama. His work spans the Ethereum Yellow Paper, Solidity’s initial proposal, blockchain interoperability and the JAM architecture. He returned as Parity CEO in August 2025 and announced a direct focus on technical delivery in July 2026.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Parity Technologies; focusing directly on technical delivery as of July 2026
- **Organizations:** Parity Technologies, Polkadot, Kusama, Web3 Foundation, Ethereum
- **From:** Lancaster, United Kingdom
- **Nationality:** British
- **Education:** MEng in Computer Systems and Software Engineering, University of York, PhD in Computer Science; thesis: Content-based visualisation to aid common navigation of musical audio, University of York, Lancaster Royal Grammar School
- **Known for:** Co-founded Ethereum and served as the Ethereum Foundation’s first CTO., Authored the Ethereum Yellow Paper., Proposed Solidity; implementation proceeded with Christian Reitwiessner and other contributors.

## Career timeline

- **2002** — Completed his MEng at the University of York.
- **2005** — Completed his York PhD on navigating musical audio through visualisation.
- **2014** — Co-founded Ethereum, led its C++ implementation, authored the Yellow Paper and proposed Solidity.
- **2014** — Published his blockchain-based vision of Web 3.0.
- **2015** — Co-founded EthCore, later renamed Parity Technologies.
- **2016** — Left the Ethereum Foundation; published the Polkadot white paper.
- **2017** — Established the Web3 Foundation.
- **2019** — Kusama launched as Polkadot’s canary network.
- **2020** — Polkadot mainnet launched; Wood took the Parity CEO title in late 2020.
- **2022** — Handed the CEO role to Björn Wagner and became Chief Architect.
- **2024** — Presented JAM, specified in the Gray Paper.
- **2025** — Announced his return as Parity CEO, effective in late August.
- **2026** — Announced that he would lead technical delivery directly with a team running the business around him.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Ethereum and served as the Ethereum Foundation’s first CTO.
- Authored the Ethereum Yellow Paper.
- Proposed Solidity; implementation proceeded with Christian Reitwiessner and other contributors.
- Created Polkadot and Kusama.
- Co-founded Parity Technologies and founded the Web3 Foundation.
- Authored the JAM Gray Paper.
- Co-authored Mastering Ethereum.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Parity’s October 12 JAM overview described an active engineering programme; the public Parachain Service implementation remained a proof of concept.
- **2026-07** — Wood announced a direct focus on technical delivery following Pierre Aubert’s departure as VP of Engineering; no explicit CEO resignation was announced in the note.
- **2025-08** — Wood announced his return as Parity CEO in late August, succeeding Björn Wagner.

## Links

- Website: https://gavwood.com/
- LinkedIn: https://ch.linkedin.com/in/gavin-wood-88843316
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/gavofyork
- GitHub: https://github.com/gavofyork

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/gavin-wood
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-21