Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer who was born in Moscow in 1994. He became known through co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2012 and the blockchain project Ethereum in 2015, which has become the second largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization.
Buterin was introduced to Bitcoin in 2011 by his father. His first contribution to space was when he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine with Mihai Alisie in 2011. The website was launched in 2012. Buterin was a senior writer for the magazine until 2014. That year he accepted a Thiel scholarship and devoted himself entirely to the development of Ethereum.
In 2015, Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin and others introduced the Ethereum blockchain, a platform that allows users to build decentralized applications. Buterin tried to provide new use cases for blockchain technology that went beyond Bitcoin’s financial applications. Ethereum works as a blockchain-based operating system that allows anyone to create and execute intelligent contracts and decentralized applications.
In 2019, Buterin (often referred to simply as “Vitalik”) proposed a major update called Ethereum 2.0, which included plans to reduce the blockchain’s transaction throughput traffic, lower network costs, and increase the rewards for the node validators. Ethereum developers believe it will take several years for the upgrade to complete. In November 2020, Buterin put $ 1.4 million worth of ether – Ethereum’s native token – into the original contract that will eventually lead the new Ethereum 2.0 platform. Phase 0, the first of several phases, went live on December 1, 2020.
Buterin is a philanthropist. In 2017, he donated $ 763,970 worth of ether to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute to ensure that artificial intelligence technologies have a positive impact on humanity. In 2018, he donated $ 2.4 million worth of ether to the SENSE Research Foundation, which develops solutions to health problems related to aging. Later that year, he donated $ 1 million to charity for Ugandan refugees. In 2018, Buterin received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel for his innovative work in the blockchain area and his contribution to the ecosystem.
By John Metais and Alyssa Hertig
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