"I started writing Ethereum code in December when I only had 500 pounds left and my rent was exactly 500 pounds a month. I had already started two startups, but neither of them made much progress. I even wanted to find a job in a bank. At this time, he gave me 1,000 pounds a month to keep working on Ethereum. I wanted to see if this white paper could really be realized, so I started writing code. A few months later, I became a co-founder of Ethereum."
Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, creator of Polkadot and visionary promoter of Web3. In a 3-hour interview last week, he revealed the secrets of the future of blockchain technology. PolkaWorld will be released in several parts, this article is the first part!
Before we officially begin, let’s take a look at some of the fascinating ideas and conversations!
You created the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and founded Polkadot. In your opinion, what is Ethereum's greatest achievement so far? — Ethereum is the project that has created the most millionaires in history.
So, how do you come up with a great idea? — A good idea is one where you can clearly see the path to its realization.
What do you really think of Meme Coin? — Bullshit.
What is Polkadot’s greatest achievement? — Implementing a secure sharded blockchain.
So what is Polkadot’s biggest challenge right now? — It’s its sharding design.
Your childhood didn't seem easy, can you tell me more about it? -- I grew up with a single mom whose husband was violent. I remember that period very clearly, and it was filled with feelings of abandonment. This makes me even more grateful that I have a safe environment now.
People often say that "too early is wrong". As an inventor, you always foresee trends early. Have you ever experienced misunderstanding or even setbacks because you were "too early"? - Is this really what Howard Marks said?
Read on and enjoy what Gavin has to say!
Start with a greeting
Kevin: Thank you so much for this interview, Gavin. Are you drinking Japanese whisky right now?
Gavin: Yes, Yamazaki for 12 years.
Kevin: I heard that you like whiskey and Japanese culture.
Gavin: Yes! Cheers! Kampai!
Kevin: Is Kampai Japanese? I thought it was Chinese.
Gavin: Kampai is Japanese for cheers.
Kevin: Can you speak Japanese?
Gavin: No, but I know some basic terms so I can handle it.
Kevin: Do you live in Japan?
Gavin: I have a house in Japan now.
Kevin: Why?
Gavin: I just love the culture here. Maybe it's not suitable for living here all year round, but the culture in Japan is really unique and it's very interesting to live here.
Kevin: What do you like about Japanese culture?
Gavin: It's actually very different to other places in Asia. The service is really great and it's very obvious how much thought has gone into all the details. It's completely different to the UK.
Kevin: So what do you think of the UK?
Gavin: You know, I grew up here, I'm British. So for me, it's kind of... I don't really want to spend all my time here, but I have a house in Cambridge and I enjoy living here. There are certain elements of British culture that I really like.
Kevin: For example?
Gavin: For example, the British Indian curry is great. I like traditional pubs, ales, and cheese. For example, the pie is always delicious. There are also fish and chips and Sunday roasts, which are also very good. The British are one of the more polite countries in the world, which I appreciate.
Kevin: Yes, but for people like me, if you are not from the UK, especially if English is not your native language, like I am from Switzerland, sometimes it is difficult to understand what the British really mean, especially their sense of humor, right? British humor is really difficult to understand and very special.
Gavin: Yes, I think humor is a great way to communicate. Often you will find that there is a lot of meaning in a joke. In some places, humor has become a part of communication, such as using humor to express your meaning slightly indirectly, or to find some common ground that everyone can agree on, rather than just saying it directly. It is a very natural way of communication.
Kevin: I'm told that this is also true in Japan. I've heard that people from Osaka (and maybe Kyoto, but definitely not Tokyo) are more casual and have a better sense of humor.
Gavin: Yes, it's very different when you're born and raised in Tokyo and then go to those places. In Tokyo, the communication style is usually more formal, while in Osaka, people there like to joke around naturally, and humor becomes part of their communication. When one person is used to communicating with humor and the other is not, the difference becomes very obvious.
Kevin: Do you think humor is more related to culture or to a person's intelligence? For example, the understanding of humor?
Gavin: I think humor relies a lot on a common point of cognition, a common way of perceiving, and a common way of understanding the world. So it's not necessarily directly tied to intelligence. But to some extent, intelligence can be used as a tool to create humor and build resonance between the two parties in the conversation.
As I understand it, and I've thought a little bit about humor, it's usually based on the idea that when you say something, or you do something, it can be interpreted in two ways by the target audience (the interlocutor), while other observers may only interpret it in one way. This hidden interpretation is what makes the humor work.
It's funny because the target audience realizes that they can interpret the statement in two ways, and knows that everyone else can only understand it in one way. At the same time, they also know that the speaker of the statement knows this. Therefore, a special and exclusive understanding is formed between the two parties in which no one else can participate. This unique sense of resonance is the essence of humor.
Gavin's Childhood
Kevin: Do you like to analyze a lot of things?
Gavin: Of course.
Kevin: Who are you?
Gavin: This is the question that the Boran people ask Deran in Babylon 5, and that episode takes up an entire episode to answer.
Kevin: So let me start with this question as well.
Gavin: However, I prefer another question: "What do you want?" This is the question that the Shadows asked Deran.
As for "Who am I?" I don't know, I'm a bit of a free spirit. I try to avoid labeling myself because usually who you are is defined by how you relate to the world around you, to people and institutions. I don't like to answer this question with a simple answer because if people hear it, they tend to read too much into it, and that's not really what I want to say. Broadly speaking, who a person is can't be summed up in one or two sentences. It's something that you can gradually feel by observing what a person says and does, or in interviews like this.
Kevin: What is your mission?
Gavin: What drives me? I don't know, there are a few different factors, and there are things I want to achieve. Like, happiness, that's a good goal. Like, satisfaction, being a good father. And there's a sense of responsibility - responsibility for something I'm involved in, a sense of personal mission. And then there's some childhood dreams, things that I know will make me happy and may also make other people happy, which tend to be in the field of art, music, and so on.
Kevin: You mentioned childhood dreams. A few months ago, I talked to Kia Wong of Alliance DAO on a podcast about two traits that they believe are crucial when looking for tomorrow's star founders in the crypto space. The first is a certain degree of "autistic tendencies" that help people think independently; the second is a childhood trauma that gives people a sense of "I want to prove something to the world." As a very successful founder in the crypto space, do you identify with or possess one or both of these traits?
Gavin: I am not qualified to diagnose whether I have autistic tendencies. However, my childhood was not easy. So, I think I can probably agree with the idea of childhood trauma.
Kevin: Would you like to talk a little bit more about childhood trauma?
Gavin: I grew up in a single-parent household, with only my mother around. That was largely her choice. But she had a violent husband, who was also my father, at the time, and that lasted for a while. I don't remember being beaten or anything, but I have very strong memories of that period in my life, mainly of a sense of abandonment. I don't know if that counts as a trauma, or what type of trauma it is, specifically. But I think it gave me a very deep appreciation for "safe environments."
Kevin: More and more people are trying to understand their relationship to their childhood. I've discussed this a lot with people like Jesse Pollack and Mike Novogratz. A lot of people go through some form of psychotherapy to understand the source of their behavior patterns. It's not just about explaining, "Oh, this is why I do this," but more about self-improvement, because we all want to be better. Have you ever done something similar, like feeling that your childhood was helpful to you in some ways, but maybe not so good in other ways, so you want to learn more about yourself?
Gavin: Like you mentioned before, I'm definitely a person who likes to think and analyze things. So it's not like I haven't thought deeply about my experiences at this stage in my life and how they might affect the way I think or interact with people now. But if you ask me if I've done any specific psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, or anything like that? No.
Where do all those great ideas come from?
Kevin: You are the co-founder of Ethereum and created the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the Solidity programming language, which provides tools for developers to build smart contracts on Ethereum. You also founded Polkadot. How did you come up with these big ideas?
Gavin: I don’t know. I think the ideas just come to me.
Kevin: Interesting. You mean you don’t have to do anything, they just come to you?
Gavin：Yes.
Kevin: So would you start with a goal or a plan?
Gavin: No.
Kevin: Or did you wake up one day and suddenly feel like, “This is what I want to do”?
Gavin: You can say that. Although "have to do it" may be a bit exaggerated. But it is true that one day, when I was thinking about something, such as taking a walk, or taking a shower, or just thinking casually, I don't know why, the "puzzle" of these ideas gradually came together.
It's not essentially like someone like Elon Musk who might decide, "I'm going to Mars," and then start working backwards to figure out what needs to be done: batteries, rocket science, this, that, and then have a clear roadmap, either in his head or on paper, and then do it one by one. For me, that doesn't really fit my style.
My approach is more of an incremental innovation. That doesn't mean I avoid making any major changes, but I look for combinations of things I already know and see working, and components I can imagine existing or do already exist, to see if I can come up with a result that seems to make sense and useful, and that I think has not been done well before.
Kevin: I read a book by Maxwell Malt, a famous surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics. It's called Psycho-Cybernetics, and it actually explains some parts of the creative process. He mentions that most of the creativity is actually subconscious. He says that when you can see something clearly in your mind, your inner creative success mechanism takes over and does it better than you could with conscious effort or willpower. So how much of a big idea like EVM, or any big idea, is the result of your conscious thinking? And how much is the result of you having an idea, setting some goals, and then relaxing and letting your subconscious mind do the work by thinking deeply?
Gavin: To me, an “idea” is not something that I can just come up with a vision like “eradicate world hunger” and then I sleep on it and let my brain or subconscious do the work. And then something will happen the next morning, right?
Because if the "idea" you're talking about is a vision or a high-level goal, then it's not really an "idea". Maybe it can be an idea for a movie, but it's not an "idea" in the engineering sense. So I don't completely agree that the subconscious mind can be of much help in this regard.
I believe that ideas must be constrained by practical feasibility.
If you don’t have the resources to solve the problem of hunger, then it doesn’t make much sense to focus on an idea of “eliminating hunger”. Of course, you might say, “We can take an incremental approach and do this first, then that.” But this is more of a top-down approach, starting with the end goal and then deriving how to achieve it. I think this approach is more like Elon Musk’s style. He has a huge fortune, I don’t know if he is worth tens of billions or hundreds of billions now, but he can just say, like the President of the United States or the Chairman of the Saudi National Fund, “Okay, I’m going to build a city there” or “I’m going to spend $3 billion to eliminate malaria somewhere.” And then use a very procedural, rational, and unemotional corporate operating method to solve the problem and evaluate whether the resources are enough to achieve the goal. But as I said, this is not an “idea”, it’s just an “outcome”.
A true "idea" is when you have a path, you have a way to achieve something. Maybe you don't know the exact details, but you know it's positive, potentially useful, and could help the world. You also believe that no one has thought of an invention like this, or that no one has tried to combine existing building blocks in this way to create something new.
This, I think, is what most people mean when they say an inventor had an idea. They mean a recombination of basic elements.
Too far ahead is wrong? Is Gavin misunderstood?
Kevin: You mean, you combine these things and think it will be useful to the world, right? But the problem with that is that for people like inventors, people just don't understand you for a while, maybe even a long time, right? I think it was Howard Marks who said, "Too early is to be wrong." As an inventor, you always get trends early. How many times in your life have you been frustrated because you acted too early or were completely misunderstood by others?
Gavin: Probably a lot, but I'm not sure. Can I really tell if someone misunderstood me? Is it obvious whether they misunderstood you, ignored you, or simply weren't smart enough to barely or ever understand your concept? I don't know. I suspect it is, but to some extent I agree with that view. But is that really what Howard Marks said? It doesn't sound like him.
Kevin: Then I will have to confirm it again later, haha
Gavin: But yeah, I think if you want to build something that's immediately valuable to the world, you have to explain it in a way that the world already understands. That's why most disruptive inventions usually start out with a very simple, even naive use case. A classic example of this is when the internet was first used to send email. Like, "Okay, now you can send messages, and instead of taking a day to get delivered, they can get delivered in minutes -- assuming people check their inbox every few minutes."
Email is only a small part of the Internet's impact on the world today, which was huge, but it was necessary because people understood email, so they understood that if information could be delivered an order of magnitude faster, or even two or three orders of magnitude faster, that would be an improvement.
So, I would agree with this: you need to explain your ideas in terms that the market or your target audience can understand.
The problem, of course, is that sometimes it's easier to just build something than to figure out what it does.
Kevin: Isn’t that the problem with most entrepreneurs? They usually build a product and then look for a target user, rather than the other way around. They should ask themselves, “Am I solving a problem for people?” But you could also argue that people who provide solutions to existing problems are actually solving a smaller problem than a completely new invention.
Gavin: Yeah, usually. And a lot of times, they're limiting themselves. They're limiting their intelligence and their thinking space because they've defined a clear scope. For example, they're only focused on making a car go faster or use less fuel. Maybe they can think of making the car fly, but it doesn't matter because their focus is only on reducing fuel consumption.
So, I agree that if you predetermine your outcomes before you actually start thinking about how to get there, you’re probably only going to be able to solve smaller problems.
If you take a broader view and are a little more hands-off about the specific outcomes you want to achieve, such as just trying to find ways to make things freer, more efficient, and faster, you may find some more revolutionary and substantive solutions more quickly.
Kevin: When do you feel like you were most misunderstood? You mentioned that this probably happened a lot, right?
Gavin: Well, I think that's pretty common when I'm working on JAM. This is the new protocol that I'm working on now. But I think that's normal because it's a really complex protocol and the way it works is very different from what's been done before. It's not always easy to understand why it's different and why it's better. A lot of it is because people may not really understand the limitations of existing approaches. This is a big problem in cutting-edge technology development.
Even practitioners don’t always have a clear understanding of the state of the art, or that the current cutting edge of technology is not optimal. Only when you drill down and truly understand the existing problem can you more clearly understand why a particular solution might be effective.
Deep intellectual understanding is the key to driving major breakthroughs
Kevin: So how do you get started? Because if you follow the classic approach, you have a problem and then you solve it. But if your idea is more abstract, how do you get started?
Gavin: I think that works well for smaller incremental problems if you start with, “I have this problem and I’m looking for a solution.”
For bigger problems, you might need to be very lucky to stumble upon a solution. Or you could do what Bill Gates did and just say, "I'm going to invest my considerable fortune into this problem." But if you're not extremely lucky or extremely wealthy, you might just start with small problems. Because there are so many more small problems than big ones, and because they're more fragmented and detailed, fewer people are paying attention to them. That means they're probably easier to solve, and easier for you to find and exploit.
So, I think this "top-down, define the result first" approach is more suitable for small problems, but not for big problems, unless you have extremely abundant resources or great luck.
That’s why I say you should start with your current situation and analyze the existing “components”.
When I say "component", I mean something very abstract, not just something you can literally use, like the Rust programming language, an Android phone, or a CPU. It also includes the following:
• Various areas of mathematics
• Different branches of engineering
• Human beings' various understandings of the world
• Goods and services already sold in the market
• Deployed projects
• Open source software
All of these can be considered "components" that you can use to build something. By combining these components, plus some intellectual novelty or creativity, you build something useful that can potentially be used to solve one or more problems. This, I think, is the essence of creativity.
You can do this easily at a lower level. For example, I can write a new program that does some kind of pair matching and use it to create a trading robot that may have some success after a while. This is solving a relatively small problem.
Academic research usually operates at a higher level of abstraction. Scholars still try to solve problems by recombining ideas, adding a little intellectual creativity and innovation, but they are trying to solve some "bigger" problems (even though these problems are not always widely understood or very important). These problems are not necessarily big problems that many people are concerned about, nor are they necessarily some very practical problems that need to be solved. However, even so, they are still creating more useful human knowledge, which is a meaningful thing in itself.
There are many classic examples, such as some theoretical research in the early 20th century, which gave rise to the theory of lasers, which were eventually used to make CDs. Without these theoretical studies, CDs would not have been invented. But when these studies were completed, no one knew what they were used for. They were almost "useless" for a long time, even decades. But when they were finally applied, they triggered a revolution in audio technology.
I'm not saying that you should lock yourself up in an ivory tower and only do things that are highly abstract and seem purely theoretical. What I'm saying is that there is actually a spectrum between things that are immediately practical and things that seem purely theoretical. And I myself am probably in the middle of this spectrum.
I'm trying to come up with some new engineering understanding that isn't going to "deploy it tomorrow and get 10% more transactions." Instead, I'm hoping that it could be part of the next generation of systems that, when properly applied, could deliver a 1,000% or even a million percent increase in transactions.
Of course, you can't be completely sure of that, because you're not chasing a specific outcome. Rather, you're chasing a deeper intellectual understanding. I think a better intellectual understanding can lead to great outcomes in and of itself, and not just one great outcome, but potentially multiple great outcomes.
