Gavin Wood: Substrate, Polkadot and the Case for On-Chain Governance

Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

From one of the main Ethereum clients, to Polkadot to Substrate; Parity has become exceptional at developing successful open-source blockchain projects. Their latest effort Substrate provides a framework to easily create custom blockchains. Building on cutting-edge technologies like Web Assembly, Substrate also offers automated on-chain upgrades.

We were joined by Gavin Wood, who was previously co-founder and CTO of Ethereum and founded Parity. We talked about the early Ethereum days, how Parity got started, Substrate, Polkadot and his views on on-chain governance.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The genesis story of Ethereum
• Why Gavin prefers reasoning from first principles to reading
• How Parity shunned Silicon Valley principles to build an developer-driven company
• Why they decided to work on a scalable blockchain from scratch instead of improving Ethereum
• An overview of Substrate
• The relationship between Substrate and Polkadot
• How Substrate allows switching consensus in a live blockchain
• Why Ethereum’s governance process is centralized
• Polkadot and the case for on-chain governance

Episode links:

• Parity Technologies Website
• Polkadot Website
• E199 - Peter Czaban - Polkadot: The Internet of Blockchain Networks
• Substrate: A Rustic Vision for Polkadot by Gavin Wood at Web3 Summit 2018
• Substrate in a nutshell
• What is Substrate?
• How Polkadot tackles the biggest problems facing blockchain innovators
• Substrate testnet launched
• Epicenter episode from 2014 with Gavin Wood about Ethereum & Ether Sale

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/259