The story of Ethereum begins with a young genius, Vitalik Buterin. He was born in Russia in 1994 and moved to Canada with his family when he was 6 years old. Since childhood, Vitalik has shown extraordinary talent and has a high sensitivity to mathematics and programming. His childhood was slightly different from that of ordinary children. He preferred to immerse himself in technology rather than ordinary games and entertainment. His father was a computer scientist and gave great encouragement to his interest.
What really changed the trajectory of Vitalik's life was his exposure to Bitcoin at the age of 17. At first, he was puzzled by this "virtual currency": "How can a string of code be worth money?" But as he learned more about it, he was deeply attracted by the blockchain technology and decentralized concept behind Bitcoin. He began to write for the Bitcoin community and founded (Bitcoin Magazine), becoming a rising star in the crypto world.
Although he admired the decentralized concept of Bitcoin, Vitalik gradually discovered its limitations. Bitcoin was more like "digital gold" and could only handle simple transactions, but could not support complex programs or applications. So he came up with a bold idea: What if blockchain is not just a currency, but can also run various decentralized applications (DApps) like a computer operating system?
In 2013, he wrote a 20-page white paper describing his vision in detail, which was the prototype of Ethereum. Initially, this idea did not attract much attention, and some people even laughed at it, saying, "Your system is just a daydream and has no practical use." However, Vitalik was not discouraged, and he proved his idea with his actions.
In 2014, he traveled around the world with his white paper to seek support and launched a crowdfunding project. Although blockchain technology was not widely recognized at the time, he raised $18 million to form a team and officially develop Ethereum. In 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was officially launched. At first, its value was almost zero, and even in the early days no one was willing to participate in the development, and even miners were unwilling to mine its blocks. However, as Ethereum's smart contract function began to show strong potential, more and more developers and companies joined in, and the value of Ethereum was gradually recognized by the market.
A few years later, Ethereum has not only become the world's second largest cryptocurrency (after Bitcoin), but also the infrastructure of the blockchain ecosystem. Today, Ethereum supports many cutting-edge technologies, such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT), which have created hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.
It is worth mentioning that Vitalik has a special affection for China. During the early development of Ethereum, he visited China many times to interact with the Chinese blockchain community. He learned Chinese and even communicated with the audience directly in Chinese in some speeches, which won him the support of many Chinese developers and investors. He also mentioned many times the importance of the Chinese market to the development of Ethereum. For example, some early miners and investors came from China. In addition, he is also very interested in Chinese culture and often shares interesting stories about learning Chinese characters on social media.
Today, Vitalik is not only a leader in the blockchain field, but also known for his simple lifestyle. He still wears simple T-shirts and sweatpants, focusing on technological innovation rather than chasing luxury. He uses his own experience to tell the world that technology that changes the times often comes from a simple but persistent dream.
