Gavin Wood is stepping down from his position as CEO of Parity, the development firm behind interoperable blockchain Polkadot (
In a new company blog post, Polkadot co-creator Gavin Wood says he’s leaving his position to spend more time on making blockchain technology more relevant to the public.
“It therefore means more time to focus on the stuff which I both enjoy and where I feel that I can deliver the most value to the company’s mission. I’ll be pointing my regained focus towards exploring how we can contribute to making Polkadot and Web3 more relevant to large swathes of the population. 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.”
Wood, who is also an Ethereum () co-founder, says his skillset is better suited for more hands-on responsibilities like coding and design.
“The role of CEO has never been one which I have coveted (and this dates back long before Parity). I can act at being a CEO well enough for a short while, but it’s not where I’m going to find eternal happiness. 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.”
Wood will remain as the company’s majority shareholder and assume the position of Parity’s new chief architect while Bjorn Wagner, the firm’s co-founder, will step into the position of CEO, according to the blog post.
