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Article author:Token Dispatch and Thejaswini M AArticle translation: Block unicorn
Preface
A $314 billion financial ecosystem creator, wearing a plain T-shirt, pondering the future of mankind.
Vitalik Buterin, the industry also respectfully calls him V God, a Russian-born genius who created Ethereum and changed the concepts of finance, art, governance and digital ownership.
The entire ecosystem exists under the shade of his architecture.
His influence stretches from the conference room on Wall Street to the developer hackathon on six continents.The central bank constructs the central bank digital currency (CBDC) based on his design.Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) powers thousands of projects that handle billions of daily transactions.
When he spoke, the market fluctuated.When he writes code, the industry changes.He didn’t even make public announcements when he donated $1.14 billion to charity.
As Ethereum continues to move forward in the crypto world as an ecosystem and is going through a difficult period, Vitalik seems to be planning his grandest vision to date: to completely rebuild it while Ethereum continues to run.
This genius who once cried because of the weakening of video games, is now the most influential technologist in the most important financial revolution of our time.
From Russia to Canada: Early Years
Born on January 31, 1994 in the city of Kolomna, about 113 kilometers southeast of Moscow, Vitalik was in a turbulent period of Russia’s post-Soviet era.
His father, Dmitry Butling, was a computer scientist, which laid the foundation for Vitalik’s connection to technology.
When Vitalik was six years old, his family immigrated to Canada for better economic opportunities.This relocation marks the beginning of a new chapter, with Vitalik’s intellectual talent gradually emerging.
In a Canadian elementary school, the teacher soon discovered his math skills.He can add and subtract three digits into his mind at twice the rate of his peers.This led him to a talented children’s program, where Vitalik began to realize that he was different—especially attracted to mathematics, programming, and economics.
“I was never particularly inspired by the traditional education system,” Vitalik later wrote.But his views changed drastically when he entered Abelard School, a private high school in Toronto.The school encourages an environment of knowledge exploration and critical thinking, which has changed the relationship between Vitalik and learning.
His academic abilities continue to shine.In 2012, he won a bronze medal in the International Informatics Olympiad, proving his programming skills on the global stage.However, the most critical moment of his intellectual development may not happen in the classroom, but through a video game.
From 2007 to 2010, Vitalik was addicted to World of Warcraft.He was hit hard when the game developer decided to remove the damage component of his beloved warlock skill, “Life Siphon” – he was said to have fallen asleep crying that night.This incident made him deeply understand centralized control.
This experience prompted him to find alternative systems and get rid of a single authority system that changes rules at will.
Bitcoin’s Awakening
At 17, Vitalik’s father introduced him to Bitcoin.This concept attracted his interest and prompted him to conduct more in-depth research.
Wanting to participate in this emerging economy but lack the computing power of mining or the funds to buy Bitcoin, Vitalik chose a non-traditional path: he began writing articles about cryptocurrencies for a blog, earning 5 bitcoins each (worth about $3.50 at the time).
These early articles attracted the attention of Romanian Bitcoin enthusiast Mihai Alisi.They co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in September 2011, establishing one of the first serious publications focused on cryptocurrencies.Despite his youth, Vitalik’s articles show technical depth and thinking beyond his age.
For two and a half years, Vitalik has been immersed in the Bitcoin ecosystem and has a deep understanding of the potential and limitations of blockchain technology.
By 2013, Vitalik decided to devote himself to cryptocurrency and gave up his computer science courses at the University of Waterloo.
“I do remember that day he came back from college. His mom was visiting our house, so when he came in, we were all three of us, me, Maya and Natalia. And then he said, ‘Hey guys, I’m actually thinking about dropping out of school,'” his dad, Dmitry.
He spent six months traveling the world, talking to developers, and looking at various blockchain projects.His discovery reveals the truth: Most projects focus too narrowly on specific applications.
This observation sparked a key insight: What if blockchain could be programmed to do almost any task, not just handle financial transactions?What if the developer could build applications directly on the blockchain?
In late 2013, Vitalik, who was only 19, wrote a white paper outlining his vision for Ethereum—a platform that transcends the limited functionality of Bitcoin, to become a fully programmable blockchain capable of supporting nearly any application developers can imagine.
The Birth of Ethereum
Vitalik’s Ethereum white paper proposes a radical idea: a blockchain with a Turing complete programming language, which theoretically can solve any computing problem as long as there is enough time and memory.At its core is the concept of a “smart contract”: a self-executing agreement that writes terms directly into the code.
People responded quickly and were enthusiastic.
Within weeks, a group of programmers, including Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin and Charles Hoskinson, gathered around Vitalik’s vision.In January 2014, they announced the birth of Ethereum.
To raise development funds, the team held an initial token offering (ICO) in July 2014, converting Ethereum (ETH) tokens into Bitcoin.The offering raised about 31,000 bitcoins, which was worth about $18 million at the time — a huge sum of money that demonstrates great confidence in the project’s potential.
Meanwhile, Vitalik received a $100,000 Thiel Scholarship established by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, to support young entrepreneurs willing to drop out of school or skip college to pursue their own ideas.This financial support allows Vitalik to invest full-time in Ethereum.
After extensive development and testing, Ethereum was officially launched on July 30, 2015.The first version is called “Frontier”, which is basic but full of functions, providing developers with a platform to start building decentralized applications.
Ethereum’s design introduces several key innovations:
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Account-based model, not Bitcoin’s UTXO (Unspended Transaction Output) system
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Smart contracts that support complex self-execution protocols
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Gas mechanism for measuring and limiting computational work
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Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a Turing-complete execution environment
These features make Ethereum more flexible than Bitcoin, opening the door to applications that go beyond simple value transfer.Developers can now create token systems, financial derivatives, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), identity systems, etc. on a single blockchain platform.
However, the launch of Ethereum is not without its challenges.In 2016, a decentralized venture capital fund project called The DAO was hacked due to a code vulnerability that stole millions of dollars in Ethereum, causing an existential crisis to the young platform.
The community is facing a difficult choice: Should I modify the blockchain to recover stolen funds, violate the principle of immutability, or accept losses to maintain the philosophical integrity of the system?
Vitalik advocates a “soft fork” to restore funds.This position sparked controversy, led to community division and ultimately led to a “hard fork” of blockchain.As a result, two independent chains were formed: Ethereum (the modified chain, the stolen funds were recovered) and Ethereum Classic (the original unchanged chain).
This decision demonstrates the pragmatic side of Vitalik’s leadership: willingness to prioritize users rather than strictly follow ideological principles.This pragmatism has been throughout his subsequent approach to Ethereum development.
Technology Vision and Evolution
Ethereum has always embraced continuous evolution.Refusing to stick to traditional architecture is not only Ethereum’s biggest advantage and its biggest challenge.
The platform’s price chart tells a story of drastic fluctuations — from a few cents at launch to nearly $4,900 in November 2021, to a crypto winter drop below $1,000 in 2022, and now stable at $2,605.These volatility has tested the determination of ETH supporters over the decade, who have experienced promised upgrades, delayed schedules, and technological transformations.
For Ethereum believers, this journey is like an emotional roller coaster.Early supporters had envisioned rapid scaling solutions, but required great patience to face years of development cycles.Some give up at the bottom, while the most loyal member of the community—the “ETH Maximum”—has always maintained faith across multiple market cycles.
What many critics overlook is that Ethereum’s seemingly slow development speed is actually well-designed.Vitalik has always been at the forefront of community development.
As a truly community-driven protocol, every major upgrade requires extensive research, multiple implementations, community debates and rigorous testing.This governance model prioritizes security and consensus over speed—a necessary move when dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars in value.
Ethereum’s decade-long journey has crossed several important milestones.
Vitalik’s roadmap for the future development of Ethereum revolves around several key stages and is named in a playful way:
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The Merge: Complete the transition to Proof of Stake (PoS)
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The Surge: Implement sharding to improve scalability
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The Verge: Introducing Verkle trees for efficiency
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Clean up (The Purge): Reduce storage requirements
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The Splurge: Enhanced quantum resistance
The recent Pectra upgrade (May 2025) advances this roadmap by improving wallet functionality and validator economy, but the real Polaris remains Vitalik’s vision: a blockchain as a global neutral infrastructure for coordination and exchange of value.
For validators, this upgrade raises the maximum staking limit from 32 ETH to an astonishing 2048 ETH, significantly reducing the operating costs of institutional stakeholders.These improvements have driven ETH away from its recent price downturn, climbing from about $1,615 in mid-April to more than 60% higher than $2,600 today.
However, just days before Pectra went live, Vitalik published a seemingly contradictory vision in his blog post Simplified L1, advocating that Ethereum must become “almost as simple as Bitcoin” within five years.
He proposed replacing Ethereum virtual machines with RISC-V, an open source instruction set architecture, saying it can bring “100 times performance improvement” while making the system more developer-friendly.
This obvious contradiction—the implementation of complex Pectra upgrades while advocating for thorough simplification—reflects Butling’s pragmatic approach: planning a more elegant future architecture while making the necessary improvements to the current system.
Philanthropist and Philosopher
In addition to technical contributions, Vitalik often emerges as a philanthropist, utilizing its cryptocurrency wealth to support a variety of scientific, medical and humanitarian causes.
In May 2021, he made headlines by donating $1.14 billion worth of Shiba Inu Crypto Covid Relief Fund to India to help fight the coronavirus.The donation caused the coin to drop sharply, but provided substantial assistance for critical moments.
His other important donations include:
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Donate $665 million to the Future Life Institute to focus on reducing survival risks, including artificial intelligence
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Donate $763,970 worth of Ethereum to the Machine Intelligence Institute
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Donate $2.4 million in Ethereum to the SENS Research Foundation for research rejuvenation and lifespan
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Donate $336 million in Dogelon Mars tokens to the Methusara Foundation for longevity research
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Donate $9.4 million USDC to the University of Maryland to study sterilization of UV rays to prevent future outbreaks
During the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022, Vitalik supported the rescue efforts through cryptocurrency donations and open positions, including participation in initiatives such as the Ukrainian DAO.
Vitalik’s personal philosophy is at the heart of decentralization, egalitarian principles, and the potential for technology to create positive social change.His thoughts evolved over time, moving from what he described as “anarchical capitalist thinking” to more “Georginist thinking” about public goods and common resources.
Recently, Vitalik expressed concerns that artificial intelligence could pose an existential risk to humans.In his November 2023 blog post My Technological Optimism , he argues that AI is “fundamentally different” from other inventions such as guns, aircraft and social media because it may develop a new form of “thinking” that may even oppose humans.
“If a super intelligent AI decides to fight us, it may leave no humans alive and end humans completely,” Vitalik wrote.“Even Mars may not be safe.”
In response to these concerns, he advocated a philosophy he called “d/acc”, focusing on defense, decentralization, democracy and differentiated technological developments.This approach aims to advance beneficial technologies while mitigating the risks of potentially harmful technologies.
Our Views
The story of Vitalik Butling reveals the contradictory forces that shape the blockchain revolution.His journey is both technical and philosophical, challenging traditional narratives about the founders of science and technology and his creations.
Unlike the typical founder and CEO of Silicon Valley, Vitalik abandons the symbol of traditional corporate leadership.He leads not through organizational authority, but rather from the persuasiveness of his ideas published in blog posts and technical papers.
However, this leadership style also brings tension.Critics such as Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believe that Ethereum’s governance still relies too much on Vitalik’s direction.“Everyone is counting on him to create a roadmap,” Hoskinson noted at a recent meeting.”If he was removed from this equation now, what would the next hard fork look like?”
This criticism touches on the fundamental challenge of decentralized projects: how to balance visionary leadership with truly distributed governance.Ethereum’s success stems in part from Vitalik’s technical insights and roadmap, but its long-term resilience needs to go beyond reliance on any single person.
Ethereum’s current transformation—from Pectra’s upgraded instant technology improvements to Vitalik’s longer-term vision of radical simplification—is not so much an isolated change as a fundamental readjustment of its approach.The recent positive response from the market shows that investors believe in this dual strategy of instant enhancement and long-term structural innovation.
The contradiction between Vitalik’s personal wealth and his philosophical commitment presents another paradox.Although his net worth is over $1 billion, he lives a simple life, wears simple clothing, and focuses on intellectual rather than material pursuits.However, as one of Ethereum’s largest token holders, he gains economic benefits from platform growth—which can conflict with the fair, decentralized system he advocates.
He is quite inspiring in how he deals with these contradictions.Vitalik is not pretending that these contradictions do not exist, but openly acknowledge them and examines trade-offs on different paths of development.This intellectual honesty contrasts with the many exaggerated marketing and tribalism in the crypto field.
In a field dominated by extremism and absolute thinking, Vitalik offers a different model: the courage to explore knowledge, the willingness to correct views, and the commitment to building technologies that serve human values rather than merely disrupt existing systems.Whether this approach can withstand market pressure and competitive vision remains an open question—which will likely define the next chapter of Ethereum and Vitalik’s story.
