OKX Blockchain 60 Lectures | Episode 46: Vitalik and the Birth of Ethereum
Hello everyone, I'm Xiao K. Today we're going to talk about: "Vitalik and the Birth of Ethereum."
In our last lesson, we discussed the development of blockchain. During the period from 2011 to 2014, some people believed that the Bitcoin system could not only serve as currency but could do much more, and they began to act on this belief. The 17-year-old prodigy Vitalik was one of them.
However, Bitcoin's core developers opposed developing more features on the Bitcoin system, believing this brought risks to the system. To this end, they prevented Vitalik from implementing smart contracts on Bitcoin. The prodigy, in frustration, started his own project, and thus Ethereum was born.
Vitalik's full name is Vitalik Buterin. His life story rivals that of a cheat-code protagonist in a fantasy novel—he can truly be said to be blessed by heaven.
He displayed astonishing mathematical talent at a young age. At 10, his mental calculation speed was double that of his peers; at 11, he entered a gifted program to study mathematics, programming, and other subjects; at 12, he could already write game programs in C++. His story with blockchain begins with a game called World of Warcraft.
In 2010, World of Warcraft was sweeping the world, and 13-year-old Vitalik was of course addicted to it. But one time, World of Warcraft removed the damage of a skill that Vitalik really liked on his favorite game character. Regarding this, Vitalik sent multiple emails to World of Warcraft engineers, requesting to restore the skill damage, but each time he only received rejection replies. In a fit of anger, Vitalik deleted the game.
This experience made Vitalik realize that in centralized internet games, players are always the disadvantaged group. Once centralized operators take certain actions, they can ruin all of a player's hard work. It was from this moment that Vitalik began exploring decentralized internet models.
Coincidentally, Vitalik soon came into contact with his ideal decentralized world. Vitalik's father, Dmitry Buterin, was himself a co-founder of a blockchain incubator. At 17, in an unintentional conversation, his father mentioned Bitcoin. At first, Vitalik didn't pay much attention, but through continuous research, he was gradually attracted by Bitcoin's decentralized characteristics.
Afterward, Vitalik joined the Bitcoin community, contributing to Bitcoin blogs and Bitcoin Weekly to earn corresponding Bitcoin rewards. To study blockchain technology more deeply, Vitalik chose to drop out of Canada's University of Waterloo and embarked on a journey across North America and Europe to visit Bitcoin projects, exchanging ideas and learning with blockchain enthusiasts worldwide.
It was precisely this journey that gave Vitalik new inspiration: "Why not create a brand new blockchain platform based on the technology behind Bitcoin?"
At the time, Bitcoin enthusiasts were going all out to consider Bitcoin's future, hoping to create Bitcoin 2.0. Vitalik believed that establishing a completely new programming language was Bitcoin's urgent priority. However, because Bitcoin's founder Satoshi Nakamoto initially used a complex scripting language to write the Bitcoin protocol and intentionally limited the complexity of transactions, Bitcoin had been unable to serve as a platform to incubate more applications.
So, in late 2013, after visiting multiple countries, Vitalik chose to return to Canada and wrote the Ethereum White Paper, hoping to create a brand new blockchain computing platform. At this time, Vitalik certainly couldn't have imagined that he would later become a figure comparable to Satoshi Nakamoto, and that Ethereum would become a project with a market value of hundreds of billions.
In 2014, Vitalik led his team to various countries, raising funds through Bitcoin's method, and quickly raised 31,000 Bitcoin worth $18 million, becoming the second-largest fundraising project in blockchain history. They also registered the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland to ensure the smooth progress of Ethereum development and ecosystem construction.
In June 2015, the Ethereum mainnet officially launched, naming this phase "Frontier." Thus, Ethereum, represented by smart contracts, was officially born, announcing that the era of blockchain 2.0 was about to begin...
Special thanks to Liu Changyong for his assistance and guidance with this episode's content.
Sina Weibo: @Changyong Teacher
"OKX Blockchain 60 Lectures" is a blockchain educational animated video jointly produced by OKX & Sina Technology, targeting zero-basis blockchain users. Through series articles, educational animations, and other forms, from the perspectives of concepts, technology, and applications, through 5 major sections and 60 knowledge points, it vividly explains blockchain concepts. This episode's content was completed under the guidance of Liu Changyong, PhD in Economics from Peking University.
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