Chapter 2: Vitalik Buterin

Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin, a Canadian computer programmer and co-founder of Ethereum, was born on January 31, 1994. He is best known by his nickname, Vitalik Buterin, which is derived from his Russian name, ????´??? ???´??????? Nower. During the early stages of cryptocurrency's development, Buterin became involved in the industry by helping to establish Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin were the individuals who were responsible for the deployment of the Ethereum blockchain in the year 2015.

However, Buterin was born to a Russian family in the city of Kolomna in Russia. One of his father's professions was that of a computer scientist. Until he was six years old, he and his parents resided in the region. At that time, his parents moved to Canada with the hope of finding better career prospects. Buterin was directed toward mathematics, programming, and economics while he was in the third grade of elementary school in Canada. He was placed in a class for gifted children since he was interested in these subjects. However, after that, Buterin went to The Abelard School, which is a private high school located in Toronto. However, Buterin was just 17 years old when he was introduced to Bitcoin by his father.

Buterin went on to study at the University of Waterloo after graduating from high school. While he was there, he participated in advanced classes and worked as a research assistant for the cryptographer Ian Goldberg. Goldberg was associated with the creation of Off-the-Record Messaging and served as the chairman of the board of directors for the Tor Project in the past. Buterin was awarded a bronze medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics, which took place in Italy in the year 2012.

During the year 2013, he traveled to various nations to meet developers that shared his excitement for building code. Around the latter part of that year, he went back to Toronto and wrote a white paper that proposed Ethereum. In 2014, he was given a grant of one hundred thousand dollars (which would be equivalent to one hundred thirty-two thousand eight hundred twenty-three dollars in 2024) from the Thiel Fellowship, which is a scholarship that was established by venture capitalist Peter Thiel. He then moved on to work on Ethereum on a full-time basis.

Buterin was presented with an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Basel on the 30th of November, 2018.

Buterin began contributing to a newspaper known as Bitcoin Weekly in the year 2011, after he had become acquainted with a person on a bitcoin forum who had the intention of acquiring bitcoin. To anyone who would write an article for him, the proprietor promised five bitcoin, which was equivalent to approximately $3.50 at the time. However, Buterin continued to contribute to the website until it was taken down shortly afterward owing to a lack of revenue. In September of 2011, Mihai Alisie approached Buterin with the idea of launching a new print newspaper called Bitcoin Magazine. Buterin agreed to take on the role of the first co-founder of the publication and would also contribute to it as a key writer.

Bitcoin Magazine, which has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies, began publishing a print version in the year 2012 and has since evolved into a digital publication. However, while working for Bitcoin Magazine, Buterin approached Jed McCaleb about a job opportunity at Ripple, and McCaleb accepted the position. Ripple was unable to provide Buterin with a visa to enter the United States, which resulted in the termination of their agreed employment arrangement.

Furthermore, in the year 2016, he served as a member of the editorial board of Ledger, which is a scholarly magazine that is subject to peer review and publishes full-length original research articles on the topics of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum, which is characterized as a "decentralized mining network and software development platform rolled into one," was created by Buterin. It is a platform that enables the creation of new coins and programs that share a single blockchain, which is a cryptographic transaction ledger.

A white paper written by Buterin in November 2013 was the first time that Ethereum was described. Buterin had stated that one of the requirements for the development of applications for bitcoin was a scripting language. However, after he was unsuccessful in gaining consensus, he suggested the creation of a new platform that would utilize a scripting language that was more broad.

Through the latter half of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, the Ethereum white paper was disseminated, and interest in the new protocol increased. At the North American Bitcoin Conference, which took place in Miami on January 26th, Buterin made a more public announcement on Ethereum. In his address, which lasted for twenty-five minutes, Buterin provided a description of the global computer that serves a generic purpose and operates on a permissionless network. He concluded by discussing the various applications of Ethereum, which included crop insurance, decentralized exchanges, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

When asked about the Ethereum Project in 2020, Buterin responded: "I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to work in such an interesting and interdisciplinary area of industry, where I have the chance to interact with cryptographers, mathematicians and economists prominent in their fields, to help build software and tools that already affect tens of thousands of people around the world, and to work on advanced problems in computer science, economics and philosophy every week." Nevertheless, in an article published in the New Yorker in 2018, his father makes the assertion that Buterin is attempting to escape the attention that is being paid to him as the philosopher king of the blockchain world. He says, "He is trying to focus his time on research." He is not overly thrilled by the fact that the community places such a high level of emphasis on him. It is his hope that the community would become more robust.

Buterin has indicated that the reason he was motivated to build decentralized money was because his World of Warcraft character was nerfed, notably by patch 3.1.0. After that, he further stated in his about.me bio that:

During the years 2007-2010, I played World of Warcraft with great pleasure; however, eventually, Blizzard eliminated the damage component from the Siphon Life spell, which was my favorite warlock skill. I sobbed myself to sleep, and it was on that day that I became aware of the horrors that may be brought about by centralized services. My decision to stop came quickly.

Several other open-source software projects have benefited from Buterin's contributions as a developer member. In addition to that, he made contributions to the bitcoin marketplace website Egora, Bitcoin Python libraries, and DarkWallet, which was developed by Cody Wilson.

The meeting between Buterin and President Vladimir Putin took place on June 2, 2017, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). At the time, Buterin was understanding the economic and political significance of the Ethereum venture for his home country of Russia. "I supported the idea of establishing ties with possible Russian partners," Putin said in a statement regarding the matter.

After tweeting about Weyl's proposal for a new wealth tax, Buterin was able to make contact with the economist Glen Weyl. Following this, the two individuals collaborated on the creation of a manifesto titled "Liberation Through Radical Decentralization." In this manifesto, they emphasized the similarities that exist between Buterin's work on cryptocurrencies and Weyl's work on market-based solutions to several societal issues. A paper titled "A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods" was published in 2019 by the two of them in collaboration with Zoe Hitzig, who is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Harvard. Through the utilization of a quadratic voting variant, the research presents a strategy for the most efficient distribution of public goods. By August 2022, quadratic funding has been utilized to distribute more than twenty million dollars to open-source software projects, the majority of which had been distributed through Gitcoin Grants.

A donation of $665 million was made by Buterin to the Future of Life Institute in May of 2021. This organization is a nonprofit organization that, among other things, works to reduce the existential risk that is posed by artificial intelligence development. However, Buterin was concerned that artificial intelligence would become the new dominant species on Earth, which could "end humanity for good."

the Thiel Fellowship in 2014, the World Technology Award in the IT Software category in 2014, the Fortune 40 under 40 list in 2016, the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2018, the Fortune the ledger 40 under 40 list in 2018, the University of Basel Honorary doctorate in 2018, and the Time 100 in 2021 are all examples of awards that have been bestowed upon individuals.

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute received a donation of 763,970 dollars worth of ether throughout the period of 2017.

In 2018, a donation of $2.4 million worth of Ether was made to the SENS Research Foundation for the purpose of conducting research on rejuvenation biotechnologies and human life extension...