The mastermind behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin invented the world’s hottest cryptocurrency and inspired a decentralization movement before he even turned 20. Let’s learn the story of just a smart guy who boosted the whole industry, and keeps moving it to the future.
Who is who
Vitalik Buterin (born 1994) is a programmer who designed Ethereum and was one of its co-founders. Born in Russia, he moved with his family to Canada when he was 6, and visited a school for gifted children, studying math, programming, and economics.
His father was a computer scientist, from whom Vitalik learned about Bitcoin at the age of 17. So, Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, also co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. Interestingly, there he got his first crypto payments for his articles.
Ethereum origins
Inspired by Bitcoin, Vilatik started to gather the team of developers who shared his enthusiasm for code. He published a white paper proposing Ethereum in 2014, and graduated from the university in the same year, receiving a grant worth $100,000.
Buterin set up Ethereum with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin, and went to work on his project full-time. The official launch took place in January 2014, at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami.
Ideas behind Ethereum
Since teenage years, Buterin was developing his views on the dangers of centralization as well as the benefits of individual sovereignty and decentralization. He decided that he needed to create a separate platform from Bitcoin, with far larger possibilities.
While Bitcoin is centered around the concept of decentralized money, Ethereum offers developers to build all kinds of dApps just on the network: from meme cat collectibles and blockchain games, to digital ID and tokenized asset platforms.
Buterin also elaborated other innovative use cases, such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Changing the world
It’s no question that Vitalik Buterin is one of the most influential people in the crypto industry, and his Ethereum is a highly important project to date.
Besides the development of core Ethereum’s blockchain (ETH 2.0 upgrade, sharding, layer-two scalability solutions, etc.), Vitalik has worked on multiple technological initiatives, concepts, and innovations in the Ethereum ecosystem and the broader crypto industry.
For example, first NFTs were minted on Ethereum, as well as several hundreds of tokens have been launched using its mainnet. Most dApps, web3 networks and metaverses are also Ethereum-based. Along with this, ETH is steadily remaining the world’s second cryptocurrency by market capitalization, and it’s more flexible and rapid than BTC, which makes it even more popular.
Making investors invest
Ethereum kickstarted the development of dApps, represented by multiple blockchain games, DeFi solutions, crypto & NFT marketplaces, etc, working on a stable and safe network. Projects from the crypto industry finally got investors’ trust and are now receiving billions of dollars.
Some may remember it was Ethereum that fueled the ICO craze in 2017, as well as the DeFi boom in 2020, and the rapid adoption of NFTs last year.
At the same time, ETH, the original cryptocurrency itself, has consistently managed to maintain its second-highest rank by market cap among all coins throughout its history.