Who Created Ethereum?
Vitalik Buterin is the creator of Ethereum, but who is he and how did he do it? Read on to find out more about Buterin and his reasons for developing the second most popular digital asset as well as the challenges he wanted it to overcome.
Vitalik Buterin background
Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer from Toronto, he was introduced to the world of digital assets and Bitcoin in 2011. At first, he wasn’t interested in developing a competing digital asset. But, he decided to take a second look as he became interested in how decentralised payment systems work.
He co-founded the online news website Bitcoin Magazine in September 2011 whilst he attended college. It was during this time he became more of an expert in digital assets. In fact, he has written many articles on the matter.
In May 2013, Buterin attended a Bitcoin conference, after this he was inspired and pursued development of digital assets full time and he dropped out of University to do so.
Vitalik Buterin recently became the world’s youngest digital asset billionaire at the age of 27. How did he make his name? Ethereum is the answer.
What is Ethereum?
In 2013, Buterin travelled around the world to meet Bitcoin developers. During this time he came up with the idea of building a new blockchain similar to Bitcoin but much more dimensional as he wanted to build on it further. In his CNBC interview he compares his idea vs Bitcoin to a calculator vs smartphone. In the interview, Buterin explained that: “A pocket calculator does one thing and it does one thing well, but really, people want to do all these other things. And if you have a smartphone, then you have a pocket calculator as an app. So basically, taking that same kind of idea of increasing the power of the system by making it more general purpose and applying it to blockchains.”
Buterin goes on to explain that the reason he began to get involved with Bitcoin was to adjust the power balance between the ‘big guy’ and the ‘little guy’. He commented that: “Because ultimately power is a zero sum game. And if you talk about empowering the little guy, as much as you want to couch it in flowery terminology that makes it sound fluffy and good, you are necessarily disempowering the big guy. And personally, I say screw the big guy. They have enough money already.”
This mindset helped him develop Ethereum and in 2013 he developed the whitepaper and then two years later it was launched. Ethereum is a blockchain that powers the digital asset ether. However, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum is capable of more than just transactions. It can build and power decentralised applications, such as financial tools, social media platforms, and NFTs, or nonfungible tokens. This is all down to the smart contract architecture Buterin designed into Ethereum.
Ether is the second-largest digital asset after Bitcoin, its current market cap is $300 Billion. For further information on Ethereum click here.
As impressive as Buterin’s journey is though, he didn’t do it all alone.
The Ethereum team
Buterin came up with the initial idea and put it into practice, he also had a brilliant team to help him realise its full potential.
After Buterin revealed the white paper, a few CEOs joined the ranks to bring Ethereum to life. Decentral CEO Anthony Di Iorio, CEO of IOG Charles Hoskinson, and Akasha Founder Mihai Alisie quickly joined the team. As the project developed Buterin added more people to his team:
Dr David Wood
A co-founder who worked on the early programming and building of the platform. He wrote the Ethereum yellow paper known as the technical bible. It outlines the specifications and nature of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which runs smart contracts and handles the state of the ledger.
Joseph Lubin
Joseph Lubin is a co-founder of Ethereum. He’s a Canadian entrepreneur who heavily invested in Ethereum. He went on to found the start-up Brooklyn-based ConsenSys whose focus is building decentralised apps. Since backing Ethereum, he has become a powerful advocate for decentralised technology.
It’s always good to have a great team with you, together they created such a powerful digital asset. You now know all about who created Ethereum.
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