Polkadot Founder hopes to eliminate toxicity within the crypto world – In an interview with Protocol, Polkadot’s co-founder — Gavin Wood, thinks back to his early days in the blockchain industry. In particular, he talks about the crypto space during the time of Ethereum’s first launch. He says Ethereum was to be “one computer for the entire planet”.
In detail, Wood talks about the toxic environment that exists within the crypto space. During his time with Ethereum, the team hoped to introduce its platform to offer a more expansive system to the world.
This decidedly did not sit well with Bitcoin believers at the time. Bitcoin maximalism was at a high back then, sadly he says, there are still many Bitcoin maximalists who exist now. Their presence creates a very toxic environment.
To draw a comparison, this sense of maximalism mirrors that of nationalism behavior. The sad truth is that Ethereum set out to offer more within the industry. Unfortunately, Wood remarks that Ethereum too saw a fair share of Ether maximalists.
In the end, Ethereum just became another network competing for the top seat in an industry that was growing rapidly. Competition became more cut-throat as more and more blockchains began to emerge.
In a way, this is a good thing, for Wood’s hope is to see a world that steers away from the ‘blockchain turf mentality’. Besides, Wood says this is exactly the kind of behavior he wishes to extinguish with Polkadot.
In fact, he believes that mitigating this mentality via offering the ability to have multiple chains is the way to do it. This is how he came up with the Polkadot network. It was his chance to start from scratch. Along with Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban, the three of them set up Polkadot in May 2020.
Thanks to the unwavering support from the Web3 Foundation and Parity, Polkadot offers a new multi-chain ecosystem that is serving as a bridge to other blockchains. Thus, it connects a patchwork of isolated and independent legal systems on the Internet.