1 year ago
90 Although Gavin Wood stepped down, he will remain as the company’s majority shareholder and takes on the title of chief architect, where his primary focus will move to creating and promoting the mass adoption of Web3 technology.
The co-founder of Polkadot confirmed that he is stepping down from his role as the CEO of blockchain infrastructure firm Parity Technologies. Parity is the development firm that developed the Polkadot network.
In an official statement released on October 21, Wood said that he never wanted the CEO role. Even though he could act as one for an interim period, it was not a position where he saw himself finding an ‘eternal happiness.’
Wood commented:
“Anyone who has worked with me knows where my heart lies. I’m a thinker, coder, designer, and architect. Like many such people, I work best asynchronously.”
“A good CEO needs to be available to others on a far more continuous basis. They need to enjoy representing the company, both internally and externally. They need to not be bothered by large swathes of their time becoming eaten up in meetings and calls with a plethora of multicolored boxes on their calendar.”
In his statement, Gavin Wood said that the co-founder of Parity, Björn Wagner, will replace him as the Company’s new CEO. He also shared that he will remain the firm’s majority shareholder and will assume the title of chief architect.
I’m happy to announce that Parity co-founder Björn Wagner will step up to the role of company CEO while I retain the title of Chief Architect. https://t.co/A85FeMGZGI
— Gavin Wood (@gavofyork) October 21, 2022
In the new role, Wood insisted that he plans to contribute to making Polkadot and the Web3 more relevant to the huge swathes of the population. He will launch the initiative by helping the community design and create several chain-integrated social primitives that he thinks are quite important to a real Web3 platform.
Parity was originally launched as EthCore in late 2015 by Wood, TJ Saw, Ken Kappler, Aeron Buchanan, and Jutta Steiner, with Björn Wagner joining this group as a co-founder a year later. The Polkadot network saw considerable growth after its launch in 2021, pushing most industry observers to view it as a possible smart contract competitor to Ethereum.
