Vitalik Buterin is the creator of the Ethereum protocol .
Vitalik Buterin, a little genius
Vitaly Dmitriyevich Buterin known as “ Vitalik ” was born in Kolomna, Russia , on January 31, 1994. Very young, he reveals himself to be exceptionally intelligent . At the age of four, he was already able to create complex tables in Excel. At seven, he wrote an encyclopedia on rabbits.
But it is mathematics and computer science that fascinates young Vitalik. He notably won the bronze medal at the 2012 International Computer Science Olympics.
He began to take an interest in distributed ledgers while playing video games. More precisely, it is with the massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft that he realizes the weaknesses of centralized systems . He then reflected on the notion of decentralization .
Vitalik discovered Bitcoin in 2011 thanks to his father. After a short stint at the University of Waterloo , he decided to leave everything to devote himself full time to cryptocurrencies .
The design of Ethereum
In the same year, he co-founded the famous Bitcoin Magazine with Romanian coder Mihai Alisie . That same year, he began to design his own cryptocurrency, Ethereum . Bitcoin’s scripting language seemed too limited to him: he decided to create a blockchain platform with more extensive possibilities .
Several years of travel and various experiences followed for Vitalik Buterin. For example, he spends some time with a community of crypto-anarchist coders .
In 2014 , Vitalik Buterin published the whitepaper of Ethereum , his blockchain platform functioning in proof of work like Bitcoin, but based on an account system and not on UTXO. Likewise, Solidity , Ethereum’s programming language, is Turing-complete , which makes it possible to create recursive loops and therefore to program complex transactions that can be automated – smart contracts .
Since the creation of Ethereum, Vitalik has become a recognized and respected figure in the cryptosphere and in scientific circles. His innovative ideas and his global vision of human and computer networks fuel many debates.
He has also received several awards , such as the Thiel Fellowship Award and the World Technology Award in the IT Software category in 2014. The young prodigy even met Vladimir Poutine at the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg in 2017.