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 covered 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

Episode links:

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

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/259