In the Professional Writing & Communications Programme, we were assigned to write a profile about a subject of our choice. I picked Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, because I was fascinated by his genius mind, eccentric personality and bizarre fashion sense.
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Roadmap of the Blockchain Genius
Ethereum has more to offer than just being a cryptocurrency. So does his creator, Vitalik Buterin — an eccentric techno-wunderkind.
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As soon as a rhythmic, funky beat dropped, a goofy group of twelve on stage put their open palms on their heads to do the shark dance. Then, one of them started firing punchlines about op-codes and full nodes into the microphone. Suddenly, a gawky, skinny man, who wore a T-shirt printed with a rhinocorn on a colourful utopic background, made a clumsy entrance from the edge with a few ungainly leaps. "Proof of stake is hard, but what I do know is when we learn to shard, we'll change the whole game though." He joined in with a geeky rap line in a robotic monotone.
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This was not your typical music festival but the opening of the Community Ethereum Development Conference (EDCON) Sydney 2019. The eerie performers were either crypto-millionaires or top-tier developers, including Vitalik Buterin. His bizarre rap might have made you cringe, but his uncanny mind will give you more goosebumps. This eccentric guy invented Ethereum, the biggest blockchain after Bitcoin. Unlike its counterpart, Ethereum is more than just a cryptocurrency; it is also an open-source internet where people can freely build any application. Buterin truly aspires to help the world decentralize — becoming less reliant on centralized systems like banks, corporations or even governments. He is altering our present and shaping our future.
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Buterin made his debut in the blockchain world when he was only 19. In late 2013, the Russian-Canadian prodigy wrote a whitepaper about Ethereum: "a next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform." His impeccable proposal impressed many developers and investors; it soon brought him a grant of $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship and a cofounding team of experts who hoped to get involved. One of the co-founders, Joseph Lubin, told Financial Post why he gravitated to Buterin's idea in the first place, "It basically enabled me to understand how we could crystallize all the potential we saw and many other people saw in Bitcoin. It really provided a mechanism for how we could 'decentralize all the things.'"
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Intelligence and vision alone are not enough to bring an unprecedented project alive. It takes perseverance, and Buterin has much to offer. "Buterin was the only person awake. He was sitting outside in a deck chair, working intensely," writes Morgen Peck in an article for Wired. The journalist stayed with the Ethereum team at a beach house during the Miami Bitcoin Conference 2014; she witnessed Buterin "hovering above his laptop like a preying mantis, delivering it nimble, lethal blows at an incredible speed." Former Ethereum cofounder Charles Hoskinson also endorsed Buterin’s hard-working mentality on his YouTube channel years after the two parted ways because of conflicting approaches to the project, "There's always an engineering mindset of 'build it, build it, build it, build it.' And there's a persistence there that is quite impressive. And I admire that."
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Ethereum went live in the summer of 2015 and continued to achieve several milestones in the following years. Ethereum’s success put Buterin on Fortune 40 under 40 in 2016 and Forbes 30 under 30 in 2018; his net worth hit approximately $1.46 billion when the cryptocurrency reached its all-time high, according to Forbes. But money and fame is never his goal. Over the years, the young billionaire has generously donated millions to different research foundations and relief funds, including $5 million to Ukraine. Apart from his philanthropy, he is also a minimalist nomad who only brings a 40-litre package containing his laptop and all the supplies he needs when he travels worldwide to attend conferences and meet up with experts.
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Buterin's modesty extends to every aspect of his life. "If he saw there was a better solution out there would say, that's a better solution. He's ultra-pragmatic," Stephan Tual, the former chief communications officer of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), told Wired in an interview. Perhaps, that was why his creation thrived in one of its biggest challenges: mining Ethereum caused an alarmingly immense energy consumption because of the proof-of-work consensus, the same controversial mechanism used by Bitcoin. Many would have turned a blind eye, but not Buterin. He and his team decided to transition the blockchain to proof-of-stake consensus, also known as the Merge. It was an extremely complicated mission like "switching out an engine from a running car," as Justin Drake, a researcher at EF, described to CoinDesk. In September 2022, Ethereum marked a historic moment by completing the Merge. Now, it consumes 99.95% less energy.
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Lately, Buterin attended ETHDenver 2023 as a guest speaker through a video call with his face showing up on the two big screens at the venue. The host greeted him warmly, "The Bufficorn (nickname of the conference participants) misses you and demands a hug the next time you come." Buterin replied, "I will. Next time I come, I am happy to hug the Bufficorn and even any friends at the Bufficorn." Then, he moved on to preach about the next steps of Ethereum: how we can scale up the extent of decentralization by improving user experiences. His 15-minute speech got a standing ovation from the excited audience. Buterin smiled, with awkwardness as usual and satisfaction, and wrapped up the call with a Vulcan salute.
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