When "decentralization" is abused, Gavin Wood redefines the meaning of Web3 as Agency!

This article is excerpted from an interview with Gavin Wood at the PBA Bali event earlier this year!

I hope to change this situation through a series of new initiatives

Michael: Hello everyone! Today we bring you a very special and long-awaited interview. We have invited Dr. Gavin Wood—co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Polkadot. Gavin, welcome to Bali.

Gavin: Thank you, I’m very happy to be here.

Michael: For those in the community who may only know you on a basic level or haven’t followed your journey closely, could you briefly share your story?

Gavin: I grew up in the UK, went to university, and later earned a PhD. My research focused on music visualization—how to turn music into images. After graduating, I joined Microsoft Research, working on programming languages.

I truly entered the blockchain world in 2013. At that time, I read a newspaper article and started paying attention to bitcoin again. Actually, I knew about bitcoin as early as 2011, but I bought in too early and didn’t hold on (laughs). It wasn’t until late 2013 that I received an early version of Vitalik’s Ethereum whitepaper and proactively offered to help write code. I started coding in December that year, and a month or two after Ethereum officially launched, I became a co-founder and served as CTO of the Ethereum Foundation for about a year.

After that, I left and founded Parity Technologies, where the team developed a lot of core infrastructure:

• Developed a bitcoin client 
• Developed an Ethereum client 
• Developed a Zcash client 

In 2017, I founded the Web3 Foundation and launched the Polkadot crowdloan. We launched Kusama first, then Polkadot mainnet in 2020, and parachains went live as scheduled in 2021.

Since then, I’ve been working hard to realize the vision I outlined in the 2016 Polkadot whitepaper. For the past two years, my main focus has been on JAM—a major technical upgrade for Polkadot. At the same time, I’m also advancing the Proof of Personhood project, which I hope to launch later this year.

Michael: Many in our community are users from Ethereum who have followed your journey from Ethereum to Polkadot, are familiar with the parachain development cycle, the launch of parachains, and the evolution of early ecosystem projects. But as the crypto industry becomes more crowded and noisy, many may have missed some of Polkadot’s recent major developments.

Today, Polkadot is at a very interesting point—a kind of “rebirth after the parachain era,” a new beginning in a sense. At this moment, what excites you most about the ecosystem? Do you think the overall health of the Polkadot ecosystem is good? What keeps you motivated and looking forward to Polkadot every morning?

Gavin: For me, the most exciting thing is first and foremost the people—the builders in the ecosystem. Especially those teams who have been working on Polkadot for several years; they generally have the right mindset: they know why they’re doing what they do, and they fully understand why they chose Polkadot technology.

Secondly, I appreciate Polkadot as a platform itself. The technology we’ve built is fundamentally solid and excellent, and it’s ready to support products that can truly change the world—not just serving the 300,000–400,000 crypto natives, but everyone. That was the original intention behind Polkadot’s design.

However, I must admit that at this stage, many of the technologies and products on Polkadot still to some extent rely on users who are already in the crypto space. This inevitably limits the audience. Moreover, crypto natives themselves are easily distracted by all sorts of noise in the industry.

Therefore, I hope we can change this situation through a series of new initiatives, one of which is the very important direction of “Proof of Personhood.”

Gavin redefines the meaning of Web3 as Agency

Michael: Were you really the first to propose the term “Web3”?

Gavin: I believe so.

Michael: Since you were the first to propose the concept of Web3, how would you explain Web3 as we move toward this era? What was your vision at the time?

Gavin: The term Web3 was coined by me in April 2014, just before my 24th birthday. It originally referred to the whole set of technologies we were about to enter while developing Ethereum.

At that time, we were building Ethereum, a smart contract platform. If you read the early versions of the Ethereum whitepaper, it actually described Ethereum as “bitcoin with better scripting.” That’s also how Vitalik understood it.

But after I joined, I saw it as much more than that—it was a key component for building the next generation of the internet, the infrastructure for large-scale multi-user applications. But it was only one component, not the whole. I thought the system also needed other parts, like BitTorrent, browsers, and a way for nodes to communicate without consensus or fees.

To me, Web3 is a combination of a whole set of technologies.

But today, the term has been severely diluted. Many projects and people use it in ways that no longer match the original meaning, but that’s reality.

So the question is: why should people use Web3? Why not just keep using Web2 banking apps, iPhones, or the Apple ecosystem?

The answer is a single word—Agency.

Web3 gives you real agency; it makes you the subject of your own destiny—a self-acting agent in society. That is the fundamental meaning of Web3.

When I wrote the original “manifesto” (or whatever you want to call it), I didn’t actually approach it from the perspective of agency. The argument was simple: this technology should exist, or else governments, companies, or institutions will eventually harm you.

But I didn’t discuss what mindset people should have to avoid being controlled, how to maintain autonomy, or delve into deeper personal or social philosophy. Yet these things are necessary. And it’s not just me who thinks so. If you talk to some truly insightful people—some of whom I call friends—they’ll also say: technology alone is not enough.

If we want this technology to go mainstream, we must give people a “new perspective on the world,” a way to understand why we need to go further.

Because right now, people really do need to “go further.”

For example, what does “going further” mean today? It means registering an exchange account, doing a bunch of KYC, figuring out how to transfer from your bank, only to be told by the bank: “You can’t send money to that account, that’s a crypto exchange, we don’t trust you’re playing with crypto.” The whole onboarding process is terrible.

And this awfulness is not accidental, because the existing system fundamentally does not want 8 billion people to easily enter the new financial system.

Apple, Netflix, the banking system, and even Solana, do not truly give people “agency”

Michael: As you just said, the existing system will not quietly exit the stage of history; it will do everything it can to maintain its position in the monetary system. From a research perspective, I completely understand your point. Personally, I also grew up in the Ethereum community, deeply involved since 2017, so I have deep feelings for that ecosystem.

But later, the reason I followed your philosophy to Polkadot was because of “decentralization.” In my past experience in traditional business, I gradually became a kind of “decentralization geek.”

However, what saddens me is that the whole industry seems to be splitting into three types of people:

• Those who firmly believe in decentralization (maxis) 
• Those who are here just to make money and speculate 
• Trend followers—those who think Web3 is cool today and join, but leave as soon as the market says it’s peaked 

The group that truly sticks to the decentralization philosophy is actually getting smaller.

You mentioned the concept of “agents” a few days ago, so I want to ask: What do you hope these “agents” in the ecosystem should do? How do you hope they will stand at the forefront and drive the ecosystem forward?

Gavin: First, they must truly understand what it means to be an “agent.” This concept is much deeper than most people think. Even if someone can intuitively describe its general meaning, truly internalizing this philosophy and constantly reminding oneself of it—that’s the key first step to acting correctly.

The second step is education. Helping those who “want to become agents,” or “have the potential to become agents,” to understand this mindset and thus grow into true agents.

The third step is broad advocacy, bringing this mindset to the wider world, not just within the crypto space.

You mentioned “decentralization geeks.” But honestly, the word “decentralization” has been severely diluted, overused, and used too casually.

This is exactly why I think we should use a more direct and powerful term, rather than relying on a word that has become ambiguous—which is why I prefer the concept of “agent.”

It has a rigorous definition in economics, whereas “decentralization” is often misunderstood as “distribution.”

As early as ten years ago, someone drew a diagram distinguishing centralization, decentralization, and distribution. What many people think of as “decentralization” is actually called “distribution” in that diagram; what I originally considered “decentralization” is closer to “federalism”—like breaking the center into several parts and connecting them into a loose network, similar to today’s banking system.

So, the word “decentralization” is now both vague and powerless. “Agency” emphasizes the individual, the ability to act as a subject.

Of course, you could also use “self-sovereignty,” but that term is too long and easily politicized; by contrast, “agency” is concise, powerful, less controversial, and well understood in economics.

For me, the core of all this is: helping people understand what kind of mindset they should have. Or more accurately: they already have this mindset, it just hasn’t been clearly expressed yet.

And once they realize this, it’s easy to further understand: to implement this personal philosophy, you need matching technological support.

Because existing services—Apple, Netflix, the banking system, and even Solana (thanks for mentioning it)—do not truly give you this “agency.”

I’m not saying Solana is as bad as Apple—Apple is obviously worse. But you get my point.

The real competition is not about money, but about values

Michael: As “agents” in the Polkadot ecosystem, including myself, we have always faced “money offensives” from other ecosystems. When we try to convince large institutions to build in the Web3 environment, we often have to compete with ecosystems that “throw money at projects”—we won’t name names, but everyone knows who.

Gavin: That’s just how things are. Money can indeed buy attention, but at an extremely high cost. And if that attention doesn’t translate into long-term use and long-term building, then the money is wasted. Because that money was never intended for the long-term ecosystem, but for short-term interests and performance.

So, if the other side relies on money but can’t create long-term value, we can simply be patient and watch. There’s no need to fight money with money. If we must compete, let’s use “values” to counter “money.”

You can tell them: “Yes, they have money, they have big VCs behind them, so of course they have money. They represent the existing system. If you want to continue living in that system, you can choose them. But we have a different set of values—we believe that way of life doesn’t really benefit you. If you want to leave that system and choose another set of values, we provide the technology and show you how to use it.”

Of course, it’s fine to offer some incentives in the process—at the right time, in the right way, and in a fair form. But that’s completely different from “turning on the money tap for a football team.”

Education is the road to freedom

Michael: Alright, everyone can interpret that as they wish (laughs). As someone building products in the Polkadot ecosystem, I’m very grateful for projects like PBA. It’s truly sad to see teams leave for money rather than stay for values. So I’m very thankful that PBA has come to this region to help us promote the technologies and values we hope to spread.

One last question: What is the future of PBA? Where is it headed? What is your ultimate vision?

Gavin: Ultimately, PBA is part of our entire value system. Our philosophy is: education is a key component of building a better society.

Technology itself is limited in what it can do, but people must understand “why they should use these technologies.” These people include users, developers, and policymakers.

PBA’s core audience is mainly developers, engineers, and technical personnel; it also includes some founders and, increasingly, decision-makers. PBA-X is more oriented toward enthusiasts and general users.

There’s a phrase on my travel backpack: “Educate to liberate—the road to freedom is education.”

That’s exactly what we’re doing. Education is about helping people better understand the world they live in.

And the education we’re doing will help people understand the world around Web3, Polkadot, and to some extent, “individual agency.”

In the future, PBA’s courses may:

• Include more content about “individual agency” 
• Focus more on “products” 
• Discuss more about “how to reach ordinary users” 
• Relatively reduce some of the hardcore technical content about “how Polkadot’s underlying infrastructure is built” 

This is my speculation about the future direction of PBA’s courses.

But one thing I’m very certain of: PBA, and education itself, are indispensable parts of our entire project philosophy. In a sense, it’s also my personal philosophy.

This is also why we are willing to invest resources to support educational projects: what we pursue is “real education”—academically rigorous, focused on fundamental principles, including economics, game theory, cryptography, and other foundational disciplines, not just teaching you “how to use an API right away” or “how to quickly launch a meme coin.”

We’re not here for a fleeting dopamine rush. We’re here because we believe that if enough people truly use these technologies, it will make the world a better place.

Michael: Wonderfully said. Thank you for all your efforts. We’ve been closely following your work and are very grateful for your promotion of these values. The industry still has a long way to go, so thank you so much for coming to Bali.

Gavin: Glad to be here, thank you all.