This article was last updated on October 23, 2022
Polkadot’s co-founder announced on October 21 that he would be stepping down from his position as CEO of Parity Technologies- the company behind the popular crypto project Polkadot. Wood, who was also a founding member of Ethereum, contributed to raising the prominence of the Polkadot platform, which enables communication across several blockchains. The DOT coin from Polkadot, with a market value of $6.8 billion, is one of the twenty largest cryptocurrencies. Now, following his resignation as CEO of Polkadot, he is looking to get back into the coding and development aspects of the industry.
- Polkadot’s corporate parent company, Parity Technologies, has received notice of Gavin Wood’s resignation as CEO.
- He joins a lengthy line of cryptocurrency executives who have left their positions since the summer.
- Polkadot’s price fell by 4% following the news
According to the announcement posted on the Parity website, Wood’s CEO role will be filled by Björn Wagner, another co-founder of the project. In his statement, Wood said that “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 was also integral in the development of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency asset by market size. He was the chief technological officer of the blockchain network. Later, he established Kusama and Polkadot, two further blockchain networks.
Polkadot’s Price Falls Off By 4%
Following Wood’s announcement of his resignation as CEO, Polkadot’s price fell by more than 4%. This comes only a day after the token lost almost one-fifth of its value on October 20. The thirty days metric paints a worse picture as it has lost 7.4% of its value. The asset is now trading 89% below its all-time high. According to market valuation, Polkadot is one of the top 20 digital assets. The network is worth around $6.5 billion as of the time of writing. Anyone with the means to sell at the market’s peak in November last year benefited greatly from the Polkadot euphoria.
Polkadot is a so-called multichain network that enables its developers to individually build upon their own blockchain and joins those many, smaller networks together as “parachains.” It is commonly believed that Wood was the brains of Polkadot. Since the network’s founding in 2020, its highly decentralized structure has made it a compelling alternative to Ethereum; its native token, DOT, is now the eleventh-largest cryptocurrency by market value.
Wood is the latest in a long line of crypto executives who have decided to leave their roles this year. Big heavyweights in the sector, including Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell, and MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor are just a handful of the notable CEOs in the cryptocurrency world that have departed in the last few months.
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