“Ten, five, or even two years ago, my opinions on what Ethereum and blockchains can do for the world were very abstract. [...] Today’s world is no longer that world.”
Vitalik Buterin is a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain and Bitcoin Magazine. Born in Kolomna, Russia in 1994, Buterin emigrated to Canada at 6 years old with his parents. At school, Buterin quickly developed a knack for mathematics, programming and economics and was reportedly able to add three-digit numbers in his head 10x faster than anyone else. At 17, Buterin learned about Bitcoin from his father, Dmitry Buterin. In 2011, Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and became its leading content writer. Using his industry exposure, he went on to craft the concept for Ethereum and published its namesake white paper in 2014, citing the need for a blockchain with more programmability than Bitcoin.
The Ethereum blockchain launched in 2015, and its native coin, Ether, has since become the second-largest crypto asset by market cap. The Ethereum blockchain features a vibrant system of ERC-20 tokens, decentralized finance protocols, decentralized exchanges, stablecoins and GameFi projects. Although Buterin brought Ethereum’s white paper to life, other notable co-founders for the project include Polkadot’s Gavin Wood, Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson and ConsenSys’ Joseph Lubin. Buterin is actively involved in the crypto community and Ethereum’s development.
Buterin started off the year by giving the thumbs down to cross-chain bridge applications in DeFi, citing their critical vulnerability to hackers. His predictions would ultimately become true, with 2022 seeing DeFi security losses increase 47.2% to $3.64 billion, with roughly half of the incidents cross-chain bridge exploits. The Ethereum co-founder also suggested that NFTs should be made “soulbound,” like certain items in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, for the purpose of demonstrating achievement — such as winning GameFi tournaments or attending an invitation-only crypto conference. Amid the onset of the crypto bear market, Buterin became a citizen of Montenegro and donated $5 million to Ukraine to help with its humanitarian and war efforts.
In September, Buterin and his team of developers completed the long-awaited Ethereum Merge upgrade, which transformed the blockchain’s consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The upgrade made Ethereum mining largely obsolete (save for Ethereum Classic operators) and is estimated to save over 99% in energy costs. The upgrade had been in the making since 2014.
For the new year, Buterin expressed that he looks most forward to the scaling of zero-knowledge rollups with the introduction of EIP-4884. Zk-Rollups allow the validation of Ethereum transactions on a layer-2 blockchain with lower gas fees and faster processing times. After finalization, the zero-knowledge computation proof is then sent back to the Ethereum mainnet, which allows transactions to largely bypass the mainnet’s limit of 10 transactions per second.
Simultaneously, Buterin and Ethereum’s developers plan to introduce “proto-danksharding” in the upcoming EIP-4884, which would allow the bundling of rollup data to increase network scalability by upward of 100x. In addition, core developers have set a tentative deadline of March 2023 for the Shanghai hard fork, which will allow users to withdraw their staked ETH. Going forward, Buterin also expressed his thoughts on the state of the ecosystem, saying that key issues to be fixed include user experience, privacy and scaling. The Ethereum co-founder also said he would like to see “crypto social take off.”
