Björn Wagner will replace Gavin Wood as CEO of Parity Technologies – the company behind the Polkadot blockchain – as the latter steps down from his role.
In a statement on Oct. 21, Wood said he voluntarily resigned from his position at Parity Technologies but will retain his stake as the majority shareholder and remain the company’s chief architect.
“The role of CEO has never been one which I have coveted (and this dates back long before Parity),” said Wood.
Wood added that he did not believe the role of CEO would lead him to “find eternal happiness.”
“I’ll be pointing my regained focus towards exploring how we can contribute to making Polkadot and Web3 more relevant to large swathes of the population,” he said.
Before creating Polkadot, Wood was instrumental to the early development of Ethereum and served as the Ethereum Foundation’s first chief technology officer. In October 2017, Polkadot raised over $140 million in its initial coin offering and the blockchain currently has a market cap of $6.6 billion. Polkadot uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm and consists of primary blockchain and user-created parallel chains called parachains.
Wood stepping down from his role as CEO comes at a time where a number of senior-executives have walked away from leadership positions at crypto companies, including Algorand CEO Steven Kokinos and Genesis CEO Michael Moro. Still, many industry proponents did not view Wood’s resignation as a cause for alarm, but rather a positive sign that Polkadot’s development would continue in the right direction.
“From the brief time that I spent with Gavin and from his work over the last half decade, I think this new role suites him very well and is a great development for Polkadot’s growth,” tweeted Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who worked Wood during the early days of Ethereum.
