Dialogue: Polkadot Founder Gavin Wood Talks About Innovation and Life

Gavin Wood is a co-founder of Ethereum, the creator of Polkadot, and a promoter of the Web3 vision. In a 3-hour long interview, he shared his insights on the future of blockchain technology and his personal growth experiences.

Starting with Japanese Whisky

Kevin: Thank you very much for accepting this interview, Gavin. Are you drinking Japanese whiskey now?

Gavin: Yes, Yamazaki 12 years. I like whiskey and I also enjoy Japanese culture. Cheers!

Kevin: Can you speak Japanese?

Gavin: No, but I know some basic phrases. I have an apartment in Japan and really enjoy the culture there. The service in Japan is really great, with all the details carefully considered.

Kevin: What do you think about the UK?

Gavin: I grew up in the UK. I like certain elements of British culture, such as Indian curry, traditional pubs, ale, cheese, pies, etc. The UK is one of the countries that places a lot of emphasis on etiquette, which I really appreciate.

Kevin: British humor is really hard to understand and quite special.

Gavin: Yes, humor is a great way to communicate. It often contains a lot of meaning and can indirectly express ideas and find common ground. It is a very natural way of communicating.

Childhood experiences shape personality

Kevin: Your childhood doesn't seem to have been easy, can you talk more about it?

Gavin: I grew up in a single-parent family, with only my mother by my side. She had a violent husband at that time, who was my father. I have deep memories of that period, mainly a sense of abandonment. This has given me a particularly deep gratitude for a "safe environment."

Kevin: Have you undergone some form of therapy to understand the origins of your behavior patterns?

Gavin: I have indeed thought about how my childhood experiences have influenced me now. But I have not undergone any specific psychological therapy.

The Birth of Great Ideas

Kevin: How did you come up with big ideas like the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Solidity, and Polkadot?

Gavin: I don’t know either, they just come up on their own. Usually, while walking, showering, or thinking casually, the "puzzle" of these ideas gradually comes together.

My approach is incremental innovation. I will look for new combinations between known, effective things and components that can be imagined to exist, to see if meaningful and useful results can be derived.

Kevin: How much of these major ideas come from conscious thought? How much is accomplished by the subconscious through deep thinking?

Gavin: I believe that ideas must be constrained by practical feasibility. A true "idea" is a method you have for accomplishing something. You know it is positive, potentially useful, and could help the world. You also believe that no one has thought of such an invention or that no one has tried to combine existing foundational elements in this way to create something new.

Challenges of Forward Thinking

Kevin: As an inventor, you always seem to catch trends early. How many setbacks have you faced for acting too early or being misunderstood?

Gavin: There might be quite a few, but I'm not sure. If you want to build something that can immediately create value for the world, you have to explain it in a way that this world already understands. This is also why most disruptive inventions are usually initially used for a very simple, even seemingly childish use case.

Kevin: When do you think you have been misunderstood the most?

Gavin: It's quite common when working on the JAM protocol. Because it is a complex protocol, its operation is very different from the past. Understanding its differences and why it is better is not always easy.

The Essence of Innovation

Gavin: For big problems, you should start from the current situation and analyze the existing "components". These components include different fields of mathematics and engineering, various human understandings of the world, existing goods and services, deployed projects, open source software, etc.

By combining these components, along with innovative knowledge, we build useful things that may solve one or more problems. This is the essence of creativity.

I am trying to propose some new engineering understandings, hoping that after being correctly applied, it may become part of the next generation of systems, bringing significant improvements.

You cannot be completely certain of this, because you are not merely pursuing a specific outcome. On the contrary, you are pursuing a profound understanding of knowledge. I believe that a better understanding of knowledge itself can lead to great results, and not just a single great result, but it may give rise to multiple significant outcomes.