Journalist: April Cho
By most accounts, the founder of blockchain app platform Ethereum is characterized as a precocious and solitary boy-genius. However, this reductive profile overlooks the development of his keen interest in and desire for collaboration over the course of his career. These latter traits will be increasingly tested with the emergence of internal and external challenges to Ethereum in the coming year with Ethereum’s hard fork and the rise of competitor platform EOS.
Buterin was recognized quite early for his talents in economics and computer science. At the age of 18, Buterin was granted the Thiel Fellowship, which was funded by Paypal Founder Peter Thiel. The grant is intended to encourage students to choose hands-on learning experiences by building “new things instead of sitting in a classroom.” Buterin was awarded $100,000 over the course of 2 years to build up a promising project: Ethereum.
After Ethereum’s launch, Vitalik successfully navigated the team through crowdsales that raised over 31,000 BTC valued at around 18 million USD. Most interesting is the development of Buterin’s consistent and keen interest in building community around blockchain technology writ large during this time. He established the Ethereum Foundation., formally intended to support more open source development on the Ethereum Platform.
Vitalik, by virtue of his high profile tech achievements along with the nature of the blockchain industry has had to navigate international relationships with countries like China and Russia. Currently, Vitalik is not only fluent in Mandarin Chinese but also serves as an advisor on leading blockchain government and private institutions in China including China Ledger Allianceand Fenbushi Venture Capital.
Buterin’s latest high profile stateside collaboration is with Glen Weyl, a political economist and principal researcher at Microsoft. The pair started exchanging ideas via email once they realized that the intellectual foundations of Glen Weyl’s book Liberal Radicalismwere closely aligned with the governance rules already undergirding Ethereum. The pair’s partnership can probably best be described as a hybrid of many disciplines: part intellectual exchange and part business innovation, part economics and part emerging tech.
The series of informal exchanges has recently officially been formalized through an official event calledRadicalxChangewhich focuses on developing market mechanisms for equality and cooperation. While officially spearheaded by Glen Weyl, many of the public email exchangesbetween the two leaders seem to undergird the idea for this event as well—namely, “harnessing market mechanisms to challenge outmoded rigid forms of capitalism and unresponsive politics.”
Buterin’s part in the development and design of the DAO, along with his insider’s perspective Ethereum hard fork in 2016 which was decided by Ethereum miners undoubtedly solidified his belief in the importance of blockchain as a sort of governance framework. A combination of his economics background, interest in community building and experiences leading Ethereum’s development guided Buterin towards a transformative understanding of blockchain technology’s implications as a sort of radical governance.
In sum, Buterin’s career has been marked by a move from solo programming prodigy to collaborative industry leader. Every move has brought Ethereum one step closerto the “real application to real economic activity” that satisfies Buterin’s vision. However, Buterin is likely to face some challenges give the internal and external challenges to Ethereum in the coming year.
In the coming weeks, Ethereum will be undergoing some dramatic shifts and challenges. Ethereum is set to undergo a hard fork—named Constantinople-- as early as January of 2019. Furthermore, Ethereum has seen a strong competitor in EOS, as increasingly more developers are moving to EOS to build their dAPPS. These internal and external challenges will call for Buterin and his company’s leadership team to make some tough choices regarding the direction of the platform.
