Gavin Wood in Montevideo: the Plan to Install a Polkadot College in Uruguay to Train Blockchain and Web3 Talent
November 28th, 2025
Visiting Montevideo, technologist and entrepreneur Gavin Wood explained that he wants to establish a Polkadot College in the country to provide training in blockchain and Web3, with the aim of creating technology products for export.
The British Gavin Wood is one of the leading figures in the world of new technologies. His career includes credentials such as co-founding the software platform Ethereum, inventing the concept of “smart contracts,” coining the term “Web3,” and creating Polkadot, a new open-source blockchain platform.
It is precisely that technology which inspires his next project: establishing in Uruguay the Polkadot College, an academic institution specialising in Web3 and blockchain training. This initiative seeks to create a space for educational, scientific and technological cooperation that contributes to the development of talent and to the consolidation of the country as a regional reference in innovation and digital transformation, explains Wood, who visited Uruguay to meet with government actors and academic representatives to present his plan.
In those meetings, “we spoke a little about the development perspective, about how I could collaborate and how Uruguay in general could benefit from having an institution like this developing here,” said the British technologist and entrepreneur in conversation with El Empresario.
Wood sees in Uruguay an “enormous opportunity” to develop technology products that can scale internationally. “The truth is that the fact that it is a stable country really helps. The fact that it has a very flexible attitude as well,” he highlighted.
The following is a summary of the interview.
Why did you choose Uruguay as the potential new home for this educational project? I chose it for many reasons. This part of the world, in general, I find very appealing for its geography, its nature, but also its culture. Uruguay in particular is a stable, well-functioning state with excellent educational institutions. I believe this combination of culture, stability and education makes for an excellent background. On top of that, just across the river is one of the great metropolises of the continent (Editor’s note: he is referring to Buenos Aires, his stop prior to visiting Uruguay).
The founding idea, the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, was born in 2022 at the University of Cambridge. What characteristics define this initiative? How do you envision its eventual arrival in the country? The institution is very technical in nature, internet-native, and we will be focusing very heavily not only on research and teaching, but also on practicability. We will genuinely try to help develop projects from conception through to product, including implementation and use. That is crucial for an industry like blockchain which, honestly, has barely advanced since 2008, with its first use case in cryptocurrencies. In terms of infrastructure, particularly on the internet, stable, high-quality broadband connectivity will be key for the initiative to make its mark on the rest of the world by deploying products that are available to people not only here, but everywhere.
What is Polkadot’s educational approach: does it lean more towards the technical, the practical, or is it a model that combines both? It is absolutely a hybrid. The entire process starts from basic foundations of cryptography, mathematics, game theory and economics, and the teaching has well-established principles in these disciplines, which are integrated into a viable software engineering design for a broader architecture. We focus on innovative technologies and on an innovative philosophy, in relation to ways of thinking about society. We seek in particular not only innovations that guide the economics of today’s society, but also those that will direct economic forces in the future.
What kind of impact do you expect this venture to have? The vision would be something that could become a kind of University of Oxford or Cambridge. That is truly what I want to achieve. To harness all of this new and remarkable technology, which I feel is not reaching its full potential, so the purpose would be to help it do so for the common good. I see this as a genuine potential engine for all manner of elements of society. Government efficiency is something we discussed (with government and academic authorities in Uruguay) to try to help transition some of the less efficient elements of government services towards something better. In that way one can optimise and build with a high level of resilience, which can be very important in the world to come. Not only at the level of government, but also in commerce, and in transactions both local, regional and global. The project will begin as an institution and will not be built in a day. If you look at historic universities, they started small and built from there. We will be small, focused largely on the substance of our current teaching programme, which we have already been applying for some four years around the world, with the idea of giving equal priority to research, teaching and practice. The goal is to try to bring these three things together under the same roof, to be part of a broader academic community in Uruguay, and also to draw upon our existing academic network, which is global. The idea is to try to generate a beacon of reference for how these technologies can change society for the better, making it more efficient, optimised and accessible.
Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Polkadot.
What effects do these technological advances generate in the economy? I see a great opportunity for countries outside the historically wealthy ones to claim a larger share of the global economy in the coming years. In Uruguay I see an enormous opportunity, honestly. The truth is that the fact that it is a stable country really helps. The fact that it has a very flexible attitude as well. This will be crucial because, ultimately, we are going through a transition. Our societies are optimised largely for the industrial era, with people working in factories and on assembly lines. Yet to a great extent, today value is not transmitted through building larger factories, but through building better algorithms. This project seeks to help people understand what form these algorithms take, how to think about them in terms of social architecture, how to develop and deploy them quickly, so that we know what kinds of things work well and which do not.
Could Uruguay become a blockchain hub with the Polkadot College? It would be wonderful if we could achieve that. I do not know what we can do on our own. We have great ambition, but inevitably this comes down to a collaborative effort. It will depend somewhat on local forces: universities, government and businesses. From our side, this is, of course, part of the plan.
How many people do you think the Polkadot College could eventually accommodate? For this first centre I would be looking at around 1,000, perhaps 1,500 people. I am not desperate to build something that is at university level at this first stage. I believe it is far more important to be able to offer what you are willing to provide very well, at a high global standard, to attract the best minds and to have the right atmosphere in which to do so.
How do you see the adoption of blockchain looking ahead to the future? What barriers are holding back its progress across more sectors today? It needs us, honestly. If we are not careful with the adoption of blockchain it will become another kind of tool for the wealthy to control the poor. It has the potential, like the internet, to be something far better. But it needs the right products, the right mindset, and education as well. I believe there is too little education and too much greed in the industry, and not enough understanding of how the underlying technology can facilitate a more benevolent social dynamic. Now, if we deploy this technology in the right way, if we get the education right, we can create something that is a fair deal and that limits how much wealth can be extracted from a community.
His vision for the future of blockchain
What blockchain applications are of interest to you looking ahead to the future? I am interested in helping to understand which areas of governance processes these technologies can facilitate and optimise. They could help reduce costs and deliver better services. They could improve transparency and assist in voting systems. They could also contribute to supply chains and trade finance. Another area would be guaranteeing the origin of materials and foodstuffs. For example, this would allow farmers to provide guarantees about how they produce. That information is valuable at the end of the day, and to the extent that it is trustworthy, its value multiplies. Over the next 50 or 100 years this will be a significant value proposition not only at an international level, but also for a community. In this context, Uruguay has great potential to generate technology products quickly, given that it has one of the most technically educated populations in the region. It has the potential to design useful social products and deploy them across large populations in the surrounding area.
Source: elpais.com.uy