Gavin Wood's Vision: When Web3 Truly Means Agency, Not Just Power Distribution

From Dal Blockchain to Philosophy: The Road That Defined an Era

Gavin Wood represents a unique figure in the contemporary technological landscape. The path that led him to co-found Ethereum and later launch Polkadot encompasses not only technical milestones but a gradual evolution in understanding what it truly means to build an alternative infrastructure to the centralized financial system.

His story begins long before entering the blockchain world. After specializing in music visualization at the Microsoft Research Institute, where he conducted research on programming languages, Wood discovered Bitcoin in 2011, purchasing his first quantities — although he himself humorously admits he lacked the patience to hold them long-term. The real catalyst arrives in 2013 when he receives an early version of Ethereum’s white paper from Vitalik Buterin and agrees to contribute to the development of the code. This moment marks December 2013: Wood joins the project that, a few months after its official launch, designates him as co-founder and CTO of the Ethereum Foundation.

This is not a brief pause. Wood remains in this position for about a year, then founds Parity Technologies — a company where the team develops critical infrastructure: a Bitcoin client, an Ethereum client, and a Zcash client. In 2017, he establishes the Web3 Foundation and begins fundraising for Polkadot, the project that will become the centerpiece of his systemic vision. After the launch of Kusama in 2019 and the Polkadot mainnet in 2020, parachains activate in 2021 as planned. In recent years, Wood has focused efforts on JAM — a significant technological upgrade — and on Proof of Personhood, a project aiming for launch by the end of the year. Simultaneously, he promotes the Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA), an educational structure designed to train the next generation of conscious developers.

Web3 Today: A Diluted Term and the Need for Radical Redefinition

When Wood coined the term “Web3” in April 2014, just before his twenty-fourth birthday, his intention was very clear: to describe an entire technological ecosystem under construction during Ethereum’s development. At that time, Ethereum was portrayed as “a Bitcoin with superior scripting capabilities” — a characterization even Vitalik considered accurate. However, once involved in the project, Wood recognizes a broader reality: Ethereum represents a fundamental component for building the new generation of the internet, the enabling infrastructure for multi-user applications on a global scale. But this is only part of the puzzle.

The original vision includes additional elements: peer-to-peer communication technologies like BitTorrent, innovative browsers, and interaction mechanisms between nodes that bypass centralized consensus and prohibitive costs. Web3, according to this interpretation, represents a coherent combination of complementary technologies. However, the term has undergone progressive dilution. Countless projects and actors use it in ways divergent from its original meaning, a phenomenon reflecting the current reality of the sector.

Faced with this semantic dispersion, the fundamental question naturally arises: why should users abandon Web2 financial applications, the Apple ecosystem, Netflix services? The answer crystallizes in a single word — Agency, understood as the capacity to act, personal sovereignty, and self-determination.

Agency: The True Core of Web3

Web3 has genuine value when it restores to the individual a true capacity to act, transforming them from a passive subject into a conscious agent of their own destiny. This constitutes the quintessence of the Web3 proposition, an element that the first “manifesto” of technology did not explicitly develop. The initial articulation emphasized a basic necessity: this infrastructure must exist because otherwise governments, corporations, and institutions would have perpetuated forms of progressive control. However, the analysis did not address the complementary philosophical dimensions — the mindset required to evade control, the ways to preserve autonomy, the aspects of personal and collective research.

Today it becomes clear that technology alone is insufficient. Perspicacious personalities, many of whom maintain meaningful relationships with Wood, agree on this essential point: to transform this technology from a marginal phenomenon into a mainstream adoption wave, it is necessary to offer people a “new interpretive perspective of the world” — a renewed understanding of why to transcend current boundaries.

The onboarding process into the contemporary crypto financial system exemplifies this gap. An average individual faces tedious procedures: registering with exchanges, accumulating KYC verifications, negotiating with banks reluctant to facilitate transfers to crypto platforms, repeated justifications. The entire process is deliberately hostile, because the traditional financial system does not genuinely desire the democratized access of eight billion people to alternative financial infrastructures.

Terminological Confusion: Decentralization, Distribution, and Agency

A critical observation emerges when examining the dominant terminology in the sector. The concept of “decentralization” has undergone profound semantic distortion, often confused with “distribution” — categories that are radically different according to established economic and organizational theory. A historical map, traced over a decade ago, clearly distinguishes: centralization, authentic decentralization, and distribution represent distinct structural paradigms. The widespread misunderstanding interprets “decentralization” as mere “distribution,” while Wood’s original meaning aligns more closely with a “federated structure” — partitioning a monolithic center into interconnected entities through flexible networks, paradoxically similar to the current banking architecture.

This lexical ambiguity weakens the message. “Agency,” on the other hand, precisely and economically expresses the fundamental concept: emphasis on the individual, on the capacity to act as an autonomous subject. Although “self-sovereignty” conveys similar meanings, the term is prolix and easily susceptible to political instrumentalization. “Agency” offers conciseness, power, controversial neutrality, and immediate recognition among economists.

The core remains unchanged: helping people understand what mindset they should cultivate. Or, rephrased: this disposition already exists within populations; it simply remains unexpressed. Once awareness is achieved, it becomes evident that implementing this personal philosophy requires the appropriate technological substrate.

Contemporary services — Apple, Netflix, the traditional banking system, even Solana — represent systems that do not genuinely grant this capacity to act to users. It is not claimed that Solana has levels of centrality comparable to Apple; however, the principle remains significant: none of these ecosystems truly transfer control to the individual.

Competition is Ideological, Not Financial

When builders operate within the confined Polkadot ecosystem, they often face “financial offensive” from alternative ecosystems. Institutions are pressured by extraordinarily advantageous economic proposals — from platforms that “invest capital to secure projects” without imposing particular loyalty or shared vision constraints.

Wood observes that this scenario reflects recurring historical dynamics: money attracts attention, but at an exorbitant cost. If that attention does not translate into sustained usage and prolonged systemic building, the investment is pure dissipation. Funding was directed not toward ecosystem health but toward interests and results limited in time.

If the counterparty relies solely on financial resources without generating lasting value, the appropriate strategy is patient observation. It is not worth competing financially against funding. The genuine contest pits ideas against money: “Certainly, they have capital, support from top-tier venture capital, so they obviously possess significant economic resources. They represent the existing system. If you want to perpetuate that mode of existence, their choice remains available. However, we offer a philosophical alternative: we believe that this paradigm does not truly serve your interests. If you intend to emancipate yourself from that system and adopt different values, we provide the necessary technology and interpretive guidance.”

Selective and precisely calibrated incentives remain legitimate — provided they are deployed at the right moment, in ethical ways, and with equitable distribution. This, however, radically differs from the uncontrolled opening of financial taps toward project teams, a practice akin to private sports sponsorships lacking strategic foundation.

The Polkadot Ecosystem: Between Vision and Rebirth

Today, Polkadot is experiencing a particularly significant phase — describable as a “post-parachain era rebirth,” a new beginning after the consolidation of the fundamental infrastructure. The elements that genuinely excite Wood primarily concern people — ecosystem builders. Especially those teams engaged with Polkadot for years, who generally demonstrate correct orientations: they understand why they operate and consciously recognize the relevance of Polkadot technology relative to their ambitions.

Secondly, Wood appreciates Polkadot as a platform in its structural dimensions. The developed technology is solid, excellent, ready to support products capable of authentic transformation — not limited to 300-400 thousand crypto-native subjects but oriented toward the global population. This was the original goal of the Polkadot ecosystem.

However, Wood candidly acknowledges that, in its current state, many technologies and products on Polkadot still depend on already crypto-native communities, a phenomenon that inevitably constrains accessibility. Moreover, crypto-native actors are easily distracted by recurring sector perturbations.

It is for this reason that Wood expresses hope in the potential of new projects — foremost Proof of Personhood — to change this structural situation.

Education as the Foundation of Sovereignty

The direction of PBA and the overall educational strategy reflect a deep conviction: education is an essential component for building a radically better society. Isolated technology produces limited effects; instead, people must internalize the “why” of adopting these infrastructures. This applies to end-users, developers, policy makers, and institutional decision-makers.

PBA primarily targets developers, engineers, and technical professionals, gradually expanding to founders, policymakers, and decision stakeholders. PBA-X broadens the horizon toward enthusiasts and the general public. A phrase on Wood’s travel bag summarizes the entire philosophy: “Educate to liberate — Education is the path to freedom.”

Educating means facilitating a deeper understanding of the world and the structures that govern it. Ongoing education helps understand Web3, Polkadot, and fundamentally, the capacity for individual agency.

Future trajectories of PBA courses could include: greater emphasis on individual agency; focus on “concrete products” rather than technological abstraction; methodologies to reach non-specialized populations; relative reduction of hardcore technical content on Polkadot’s foundational architecture.

However, one certainty remains: PBA and education are irreplaceable components of the design philosophy. They are not appendices but constitutive elements. For this reason, the ecosystem invests heavily in educational initiatives: research is “authentic education” — academically rigorous, rooted in fundamental principles, including basic disciplines like economics, game theory, cryptography — not simple utilitarian instruction on “how to use an API” or “how to launch a meme coin in twenty-four hours.”

It does not pursue ephemeral gratification. It operates from the conviction that if enough people actually use these technologies, the world can make substantial progress toward greater freedom and individual sovereignty.