Popular Science | Who is Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum?

Today, we will focus on this talented young man who, at only 24 years old, has created a project with a market value of up to US$11.5 billion (reaching US$134.7 billion at its peak).

01

The childhood of a genius

The child prodigy was born in Kolomna, Russia in 1994. Kolomna has not produced any great figures. Wikipedia only records that Kolomna is the birthplace of ice hockey player Vladimir Petrov. It seems that this place is not a place of outstanding people.

The prodigy's father, Dmitry Buterin, is a computer scientist. When he was 6 years old, his family immigrated to Canada.

At a very young age, the little prodigy showed his talent in mathematics and programming (perhaps his father taught him programming a lot), and his mental arithmetic speed was twice that of an average person. Of course, like most geniuses, this talent brought him a lot of troubles: he was regarded as a freak by his peers, and his peers excluded him and did not play with him after school.

(Picture: Vitalik Buterin, from the Internet)

Later, the child prodigy went to a private high school in Toronto. Here, the child prodigy felt at home, and it was the "most interesting and efficient time" in his life. Here, the child prodigy was able to study and have fun at the same time, not only doing well in his studies, but also playing games very well.

02

From World of Warcraft to Bitcoin

The little prodigy started playing World of Warcraft when he was 13 years old. But one day in 2010, due to an upgrade by "Blizzard Dad", some characteristics of the little prodigy's character in World of Warcraft were modified. The little prodigy was heartbroken and later simply deleted World of Warcraft, which is enough to show his strong character.

In 2011, his father, a computer scientist, learned about Bitcoin from nowhere and began to introduce it to his son. His father had a very good vision, because Bitcoin was only two years old at the time. Of course, the little prodigy was not that old either, he was only 17 years old at the time. After listening to his father's introduction, the little prodigy had only one thought in his mind: in the long run, (Bitcoin) is worthless.

After a while, he heard people talking about Bitcoin again. This time, Bitcoin successfully attracted the attention of the little prodigy. He decided to spend some time to study this thing, and this study was amazing. He was completely fascinated.

After studying for a while, the little prodigy wondered if he could do something and enter this industry.

At that time, he had neither money to buy bitcoins nor mining machines to mine them. So he thought about whether he could find a job that paid in bitcoins. He actually found one: writing articles for a media on a forum, and he was paid 5 bitcoins for each article.

The little prodigy then began a happy time of writing, and his articles attracted the attention of Mihai Alisie (a die-hard Bitcoin fan from Romania). The two of them later co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, and the little prodigy became the chief writer. At that time, the little prodigy was still studying at the University of Waterloo.

03

A genius idea that broke through the limitations of Bitcoin and created Ethereum

In 2013, the little prodigy went to San Jose, California, to attend a Bitcoin-related conference, where Bitcoin enthusiasts from all over the world gathered.

The conference was a complete success in a cordial and friendly atmosphere. After the "baptism" of the conference, the young prodigy who had seen the world felt that Bitcoin was "promising."

"At that moment, I was really excited. I felt that this thing was very promising and I could give it a try!" the little prodigy recalled later.

Not long after returning, he dropped out of school. This courage is comparable to that of Bill Gates and Zuckerberg in those days.

Next, he spent six months traveling around the world: Israel, California, London, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Amsterdam... He visited individuals and teams who wanted to improve Bitcoin.

After going through all this, the little prodigy was a little disappointed, because he found that what everyone was doing was nothing more than making some tinkering on Bitcoin, without fundamentally solving the defects of Bitcoin.

He believes that Bitcoin should be given a Turing-complete programming language so that anyone can develop decentralized applications on it, not just limited to the financial field.

This view was nothing short of fantasy at the time.

When the little prodigy told others about his idea, those who were patient might say "this is a good idea", while those who were impatient would simply ignore him. The little prodigy, whose young heart was hurt, decided to do it himself.

Within a month of returning home, the young prodigy had written his idea into a white paper and gave it a name: Ethereum.

It is said that the name was given because it contains "ether", a substance conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Physicists in the 19th century believed that it was a hypothetical medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves.

It is not difficult to see that the little prodigy is an out-and-out geek.

After writing the white paper, the little prodigy was still a little worried. After all, he was too young. Would his views be too simple or even naive? Would he make some obvious mistakes?

So he sent the white paper to a dozen friends and asked them to look through it and find any mistakes. However, it turned out that the little prodigy's worries were unnecessary.

Stephan Tual was one of these people. He later said: "After reading Xiao V's white paper, I thought, this guy is a genius, I have to work for him."

Later, he really joined the little prodigy's team.

Looking back on this past event, the little prodigy was also very emotional:

“When I first thought of the concept of Ethereum, my first thought was, is this idea too perfect? ​​It can’t be true, right? Hasn’t anyone else thought of it? I need to find some professionals to pour cold water on me. But two weeks later, no one poured cold water on me, I was stunned!”

A few months later, the young prodigy gave a speech at the Bitcoin Conference in Miami, where he introduced Ethereum to the attendees, causing quite a stir. Later, they raised about 31,000 bitcoins for development funds.

In 2015, Ethereum was officially launched, when the little prodigy was 21 years old.

04

The rise of Ethereum

Ethereum’s rise has not been smooth sailing.

On June 17, 2016, The DAO, an application on Ethereum with functions similar to those of an investment institution, was hacked due to a code vulnerability. Hackers stole more than 3 million Ether, which was worth 60 million US dollars at the time, and the price of Ether plummeted.

In response to this incident, the Ethereum community voted, and most people agreed to change the Ethereum code in the hope of getting the stolen funds back from the hackers; a small number of people disagreed with the upgrade, believing that doing so would lose the meaning of decentralization.

To this end, Ethereum forked into the current Ethereum (ETH, the Ethereum code was changed) and Ethereum Classic (ETC, the code was not changed).

Later, because smart contracts can be used for ICOs, that is, project parties directly issue tokens for financing on Ethereum, Ethereum became a star project and skyrocketed all the way, with a market value of US$134.7 billion at its peak.

As a result, Vitalik was "deified" by blockchain enthusiasts.

It has to be said that in terms of technology, Vitalik Buterin is undoubtedly a leader in pragmatism, and some people also call him a low-key genius.