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
