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

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 Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/259