Polkadot was founded by Gavin Wood in 2016 as a protocol for connecting and securing multiple specialized blockchains.
Wood was an Ethereum co-founder and served as Ethereum’s first chief technology officer. He published the Polkadot white paper in 2016 through the Web3 Foundation, which helped support development of the project. The Polkadot network later launched in stages, with its initial block created in May 2020 and later decentralization milestones following that launch.
Polkadot separates shared security and coordination from the individual blockchains connected to it. Its central Relay Chain coordinates the network, while parachains can be designed for different applications. This architecture is intended to support interoperability and specialized blockchain execution.
Kusama is closely related but is a separate, more experimental network often described as Polkadot’s canary network. It was also created by teams associated with Wood and the Web3 Foundation, but it is not the answer to a question about the project he founded in 2016. Polkadot’s native token is DOT.