Today, let's talk about the man behind Ethereum - Vitalik Buterin, known as V God and the little prodigy. On the "poker cards of the big guys in the circle", he is the king, second only to Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 1994, the little prodigy was born in Kolomna, Russia. Kolomna has not produced any great figures. Wikipedia only records one entry: Kolomna is the birthplace of ice hockey player Vladimir Petrov. It seems that this place is not a place of outstanding people.
The father of the little prodigy, Dmitry Buterin, is a computer scientist. When he was 6 years old, his family immigrated to Canada. At a very young age, the little prodigy showed his talent in mathematics and programming (it seems that his father taught him programming a lot), and his mental arithmetic speed is twice that of ordinary people.
Of course, like most geniuses, this talent brought him a lot of troubles. He was regarded as a freak by his peers. His peers excluded him and did not play with him after school. Later, the little prodigy went to a private high school in Toronto.
Here, the little prodigy was like a fish in water. It was the "most interesting and efficient time" in his life. Here, the little prodigy studied and had fun at the same time. Not only did he excel in his studies, but he also played games very well.
The little prodigy started playing World of Warcraft at the age of 13. But one day in 2010, due to an upgrade by Blizzard, some characteristics of the little prodigy's character in World of Warcraft were modified.
The little prodigy was heartbroken and later simply deleted World of Warcraft, which was enough to show his strong character. In 2011, his father, a computer scientist, learned about Bitcoin from somewhere and began to recommend it to his son.
It must be said that his father's vision was really unique, because Bitcoin was only two years old at that time. Of course, the little prodigy was not very old, he was only 17 years old at the time. After listening to his father's introduction, the little prodigy had only one idea in his mind: in the long run, (Bitcoin) is worthless.
After a while, he heard people mention Bitcoin again. This time, Bitcoin successfully attracted the attention of the little prodigy. He decided to spend some time to study this thing, and this study was incredible, he was completely fascinated.
After studying for a while, the little prodigy wondered if he could do something and enter this industry. At that time, he had neither money to buy coins nor mining machines to mine coins. So he thought about whether he could find a job that paid with Bitcoin.
This really made him find it: writing articles for a media on the forum, and each article was paid 5 Bitcoins. The little prodigy then began a happy time of writing articles, and his articles attracted the attention of Mihai Alisie (a diehard Bitcoin fan from Romania).
The two of them later co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, and the little prodigy became the chief writer. At that time, the little prodigy was still studying at the University of Waterloo.
In 2013, the little prodigy went to San Jose, California, USA, to attend a Bitcoin-related conference. Bitcoin enthusiasts gathered from all over the world, and the brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (the two brothers who sued Zuckerberg's Facebook for plagiarizing their ideas and finally won the case) also came.
In a cordial and friendly atmosphere, the conference was a complete success. After the "baptism" of the conference, the little prodigy who had seen the world felt that Bitcoin was "promising". "At that moment, I really exploded. I think this thing is very promising and can be done!" The little prodigy recalled later. Not long after returning, he dropped out of school. This courage is comparable to Bill Gates and Zuckerberg back then.
Next, he spent six months traveling around the world: Israel, California, London, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Amsterdam...
He visited individuals and teams who wanted to improve Bitcoin (perhaps it was during this period that he visited BM's BitShares team and the two exchanged views on the future development direction of Bitcoin).
After this circle, the little prodigy was a little disappointed. Because he found that what everyone did was nothing more than making some tinkering on Bitcoin, without fundamentally solving the defects of Bitcoin. He believed that Bitcoin should be given a Turing-complete programming language so that anyone could develop decentralized applications on it, not just limited to the financial field.
This view was nothing short of fantasy at the time. When the little prodigy told others about his ideas, those with patience might say "this is a good idea", while those without patience would simply ignore him. The little prodigy, whose young heart was hurt, decided to do it himself. Within a month after returning home, the little prodigy wrote his ideas into a white paper and gave it a name: Ethereum.
It is said that the reason for this name is that it contains Ether, which is a substance envisioned by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Physicists in the 19th century believed that it was a once-hypothetical medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. It is not difficult to see that the little prodigy is an out-and-out geek.
After writing the white paper, the little prodigy was still a little worried. After all, he was too young. Would his views be too simple or even naive? Would he make some obvious mistakes? So he sent the white paper to a dozen friends and asked them to help look at it and find faults. However, it turned out that the little prodigy's worries were a bit redundant. Stephan Tual was one of these dozen people. He later said: "After reading Xiao V's white paper, I peed. My mother asked me why I was kneeling to read the information. At that time, I thought, this guy is a genius, I have to work for him. "
Later, he really joined the little prodigy's team. Stephan Tual: He founded his first Internet company as early as 1996. From the end of 1998 to 2013, he held technical positions in several companies. From January 2014 to September 2015, he served as COO of the Ethereum team. Last December, he founded his own blockchain startup in London, England. Looking back on this past, the little prodigy was also very emotional.
"When I first thought of the concept of Ethereum, my first thought was, is this idea too perfect? It can't be true, right? Didn't other people think of it? I have to find a few professionals to pour cold water on me. However, two weeks later, no one poured cold water on me, I was stunned! "
A few months later, the little prodigy gave a speech at the Bitcoin Conference in Miami, where he introduced Ethereum to the attendees, causing quite a stir. Later, they raised about 31,000 bitcoins for development.
In 2015, Ethereum was officially launched when the little prodigy was 21 years old. The following is the well-known story of the rise of Ethereum, which I will not introduce in detail here.
