Polkadot Founder Gavin Wood Steps Down as CEO

Polkadot’s co-founder Gavin Wood is leaving his chief executive officer (CEO) role at Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 21.

According to the report, Wood would remain the company’s majority shareholder while also retaining his role as the chief architect.

Parity co-founder Björn Wagner will take over as the CEO. Speaking on the development, Wood said, “the role of CEO has never been one which I have coveted (and this dates back long before Parity), I can act at being a CEO well enough for a short while, but it’s not where I’m going to find eternal happiness.”

Wood played an active role in developing the second-largest crypto asset by market cap, Ethereum. According to available information, he served as the blockchain network’s chief technology officer. He later founded other blockchain networks like Polkadot and Kusama.

Polkadot Down 4%

Polkadot’s value has reacted negatively to news of Wood’s resignation. The digital currency shed roughly 4% of its value and is currently trading for $5.82 as of press time.

The picture is grimmer on the thirty days metric as it has shed 7.4% of its value. The asset is trading at 89%, away from its all-time high.

Polkadot is among the top 20 digital assets by market cap. According to CoinMarketCap data, the network is worth $6.5 billion.

With his resignation, Wood said he is focused on “making Polkadot and Web3 more relevant to large swathes of the population. This will begin by helping the community design and build several interesting chain-integrated social primitives, which I think are crucial for us to deliver a true Web3 platform.”

Polkdadot’s Gavin Wood Joins Crypto CEO Exodus

The recent resignation of the Polkadot CEO continues the recent exodus of crypto CEOs.

Several crypto firms have seen top executives leave their positions behind because of the market situation. Embattled crypto lender Celsius saw its CEO Alex Mashinsky resign from his position.

Apart from that, Kraken’s Jesse Powell, MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, and FTX US President Brett Harrison also left their position.