Gavin Wood Highlights Key Criteria for Evaluating Blockchain Potential

According to Odaily, Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot creator Gavin Wood recently emphasized in an interview with Forbes that blockchains lacking decentralization and resilience should not be considered part of Web3. Wood explained that assessing a blockchain's resilience often involves evaluating its level of decentralization. He identified several questions to gauge this metric: who makes protocol decisions, whether governance has clear or low entry barriers, and the Nakamoto coefficient, which measures how many parties are needed to compromise the network. Wood also highlighted the importance of more 'diffuse concepts,' such as whether a single entity can define narratives and fundamentally overshadow the ecosystem, stifling other narratives. Wood expressed satisfaction with Polkadot's decentralization, noting that according to Nakaflow data, Polkadot currently has a Nakamoto coefficient of 149, meaning at least 149 independent validators would need to collude to compromise the network. In contrast, other major blockchains have significantly lower scores, with Solana scoring 19 and Ethereum only 2. However, Wood acknowledged that Polkadot still faces challenges with high entry barriers. Additionally, Wood outlined five fundamental criteria for assessing blockchain potential: 1. **Resilience**: A cornerstone of Web3, resilience combines cryptography, decentralization, and game theory to protect blockchains from attacks and ensure long-term stability. 2. **Performance**: Beyond scalability, performance measures a network's efficiency in processing and completing tasks. 3. **Generality**: The ability of a blockchain to support various applications and programmability. 4. **Accessibility**: The ease with which users, developers, applications, and bots interact with the network. 5. **Coherence**: The capability of a system to maintain rapid and consistent communication within its network.