#259 Gavin Wood: Substrate, Polkadot and the Case for On-Chain Governance
Channel: Epicenter Podcast
Date: 2018-10-31

Support the show, consider donating: 
BTC: 1CD83r9EzFinDNWwmRW4ssgCbhsM5bxXwg (https://epicenter.tv/tipbtc)
BCC: 1M4dvWxjL5N9WniNtatKtxW7RcGV73TQTd (http://epicenter.tv/tipbch)
ETH: 0x8cdb49ca5103Ce06717C4daBBFD4857183f50935 (https://epicenter.tv/tipeth)

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 discussed 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

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- 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:

Sponsors: 
- Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
- Toptal: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent – Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire - http://toptal.com/epicenter

This episode is also available on :
- Epicenter.tv: https://epicenter.tv/259
- YouTube: http://youtu.be/eP4mT19S_jg
- Souncloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-259

Watch or listen, Epicenter is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture, Meher Roy & Sunny Aggarwal.