Written by: Vitalik Thought Research Institute
On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was launched.
Bitcoin grew organically like a myth, depersonalized and unwritten; Ethereum, on the other hand, is like an unfinished script, with the author never leaving the stage.
Vitalik Buterin, the young and famous technical idealist, has infused his personal philosophy, values, and struggles into code over the past decade.
From the initial vision of a 'world computer' to the governance reflections during the DAO crisis, from the Merge to the deep transformation of the foundation… every evolution of Ethereum has left its mark on Vitalik's thoughts.
Ethereum's ten years is also a history of Vitalik's ideological evolution.
The Utopia of Genius
In 2008, a financial crisis brought an unprecedented storm.
As banks collapsed and trust crumbled, Bitcoin emerged, sounding the horn of rebellion against the old world. This emerging technology not only attracted geeks and cryptography enthusiasts but also changed the life trajectory of a young man—Vitalik Buterin.
Since ancient times, heroes have emerged young. At the age when most people encounter love, 17-year-old Vitalik encountered Bitcoin.
In 2011, he learned about Bitcoin from his father, a computer scientist. After giving up (World of Warcraft), Bitcoin became Vitalik's new hobby.
He began searching online Bitcoin forums until he found someone willing to pay him in Bitcoin for his articles, earning 5 Bitcoins for each blog post.
Vitalik's articles soon caught the attention of Romanian Bitcoin enthusiast Mihai Alisie. The two began to communicate and co-founded Bitcoin Magazine at the end of 2011.
In 2013, Vitalik traveled around the world using the Bitcoins he earned from his articles, visiting local Bitcoin enthusiasts in Israel, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and more. When he returned to Toronto, he was convinced that everyone's understanding of blockchain 2.0 was completely wrong.
Because they all tried to build complex applications on Bitcoin, but the scripting capabilities of Bitcoin were too limited.
Vitalik realized that if he wrote a version of Bitcoin with a Turing-complete programming language, the network could provide all digital services, replicate social networks on the blockchain, reorganize stock markets, and even establish fully digital companies without being subject to any government entity's jurisdiction.
In November of the same year, 19-year-old Vitalik turned his ideas into a white paper and named it Ethereum.
This white paper quickly swept through the entire crypto community, and people realized for the first time that blockchain could be more than just currency; it could also be a global decentralized platform.
Co-founders like Joseph Lubin and Gavin Wood joined in, with Lubin even calling him 'the genius alien who brought the gift of decentralization.'
During that period, Vitalik was an extremely pure idealist. In interviews, he openly stated that he held a dualistic worldview, believing that most social ills stemmed from centralization. 'I see everything involving government regulation or corporate control as pure evil.'
However, there is always a gap between idealism and reality.
Disputes first erupted within the team. Some co-founders wanted Ethereum to become a profitable commercial entity, while Vitalik preferred to adhere to a nonprofit, open community model. He even proposed to lower his own and other founders' distribution ratios in Ethereum to avoid future power concentration.
In June 2014, the conflict reached its peak.
Vitalik demanded Charles Hoskinson and Amir Chetrit to leave the team and established the Ethereum Foundation (EF) the same year, establishing a nonprofit governance direction. That same year, Gavin Wood also left due to disagreements with Vitalik on development priorities and nonprofit direction, founding Polkadot in 2020.
In an interview with TIME, Vitalik admitted that there is a risk of the vision of transformation for Ethereum being overwhelmed by greed:
'If we do not raise our own voices, what can be built are only those things that can yield immediate profits, and they are often not what the world truly needs.'
On July 30, 2015, dozens of young developers witnessed the automatic launch of Ethereum's mainnet in a small office in Berlin. There were no luxurious celebrations, no large-scale media coverage, just a group of idealists silently watching the blocks run on the screen.
'The vision of the 'world computer' moved from a white paper to reality.
However, behind the halo, the young Vitalik was not prepared to face a more complex and harsh real world.
The fracture of ideals
In the early years of Ethereum's birth, Vitalik resembled a pure technical utopian. He firmly believed that the ultimate meaning of blockchain lay in decentralization, emphasizing that anyone could freely build applications on Ethereum without the approval of a central authority.
At Devcon 1 in 2015, Vitalik repeatedly emphasized Ethereum's characteristics of being open and trustless, painting a picture of an ideal world dominated by code rather than power.
But decentralization does not mean everything naturally tends toward good. Vitalik opposed centralization but inevitably became the ultimate arbiter of community opinion. This subtle power paradox was magnified in the subsequent DAO crisis.
In 2016, The DAO operated on Ethereum as the world's first decentralized investment fund, raising over 12 million ETH, worth $150 million. However, in June, a hacker exploited a vulnerability in the smart contract to attack and stole about 3.6 million ETH.
At that time, Vitalik was only 22 years old and had just gotten used to being called 'the God V.' After the crisis broke out, he communicated almost sleeplessly with the community every day, formulating plans and attempting remedies.
The urgent need to protect investor assets formed a huge conflict with the creed of decentralized technology. Ultimately, Vitalik chose a compromise and pragmatic path: advocating for the recovery of stolen funds through hard forks and allowing the entire community to vote on the decision.
This decision successfully stabilized the market and led to the split of Ethereum into today's ETH and ETC.
In this crisis, what Vitalik lost was not only sleep but also his confidence in the 'perfect execution' of smart contracts and the originally 'perfect' leader image. Because of this incident, the 'saint' who trusted technology 100% disappeared, and a more pragmatic Vitalik stepped onto the path.
After the DAO crisis ended, Vitalik acknowledged the gap between ideals and reality in his blog (Thinking About Smart Contract Security). He proposed the need to introduce stricter security audits and formal verification, and began discussing governance issues in public speeches, emphasizing that 'community collaboration' rather than technological absolutism is key to Ethereum's success.
The crisis brought reflection, but the market quickly entered a speculative frenzy, bringing a heavy burden to the network.
In 2017, ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) became a phenomenal fundraising method, with projects like EOS, Tezos, and Bancor easily raising hundreds of millions on Ethereum. By the end of the year, the NFT game CryptoKitties caused severe congestion on Ethereum due to a surge in users, with gas fees temporarily exceeding 800 Gwei. Vitalik realized that if scalability issues were not addressed, Ethereum would struggle to achieve its inclusive vision.
In an interview, he did not hide his disappointment with the industry's speculation:
'Many projects appear decentralized but are merely repackaged. We must prove that the reason for the existence of blockchain is genuinely superior to that of traditional technologies (like Excel spreadsheets).'
The boom soon faded, and in 2018, the crypto market collapsed overall, with ETH falling from $1400 to $83, and a large number of ICO projects perished.
During this time, Vitalik constantly thought about how to steer blockchain back in a meaningful direction.
In 2018, he co-authored (Libertarian Radicalism: A Flexible Matching Mechanism Design for Charitable Matching) with Harvard scholar Zoë Hitzig and Microsoft researcher Glen Weyl, proposing a quadratic voting mechanism intended to support truly valuable public goods through public funding models rather than being dominated by short-term speculation.
In response to scalability issues leading to network congestion, Vitalik and community developers proposed EIP-1559, introducing a dynamic gas fee mechanism and pushing Ethereum from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS) to reduce energy consumption and increase transaction throughput.
The DAO crisis, speculative bubble, and price collapse led Vitalik through a profound ideological shift. He transformed from a 'technical saint' pursuing extreme decentralization to a builder who must consider security, governance, and social value.
Ethereum is still his utopia, but it is no longer a purely technological paradise; it is a rugged path of reality that requires compromise, weighing, and broader visions.
Vitalik gradually found his own pragmatic philosophy during this process.
The battlefield beyond the code
If Vitalik from 2015 to 2019 experienced a shift from pure technical idealism to pragmatism, then from 2020 to 2022, he underwent another key turning point in thought: he began to confront the complexities of the real world, moving from pure theoretical ideals to multidimensional thinking that considers social governance, public responsibility, and real politics. In particular, the Russia-Ukraine war prompted him to use his influence to face politics directly.
In August 2020, he proposed in his blog (Trust Models) that blockchain can never achieve 'trustless' completely, as social contracts and power relations in reality cannot be fully dissolved, which stands in stark contrast to his earlier belief in completely replacing human consensus with code.
In 2021, Vitalik criticized the single token voting governance model in his blog post (Moving Beyond Coin Voting Governance), arguing that capital weight should not be the sole decision-making logic, calling for the establishment of diverse consensus and soft governance mechanisms to make blockchain more aligned with the decision-making logic of human society.
An idealist further integrating into reality.
2022 was a year of immense challenges for both Ethereum and Vitalik—the Merge.
The transition from PoW to PoS was not smooth. Many former Ethereum community members criticized PoS for concentrating power further in the hands of large capital holders, while some miners and node operators expressed dissatisfaction with the abandonment of the PoW mining model they had worked hard to maintain for years.
Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, described Vitalik as a dictator of Ethereum, criticizing Ethereum as a 'dictatorship' where Vitalik holds too much power.
Even so, Vitalik and the foundation remained steadfast in advancing the Merge. On September 15, Ethereum officially completed the Merge, and PoW exited the historical stage.
Vitalik emphasized that this upgrade not only drastically reduces PoW energy consumption (approximately a 99.95% reduction) but also lays the groundwork for future steps such as Sharding and Rollup scaling, making it possible to exceed thousands to tens of thousands of transactions per second.
In response to claims of being a 'dictator,' he stated that Ethereum governance relies on community consensus rather than individual rulings, and all significant changes undergo EIP, core developer meetings, and public discussions.
In February of the same year, the Russia-Ukraine war broke out.
As a Russian-born individual from Moscow, Vitalik rarely broke 'neutrality,' condemning Putin in Russian on Twitter, calling it 'a crime against the people of Ukraine and Russia,' and writing that widely circulated line: 'Ethereum is neutral, but I am not.'
Only weeks later, Vitalik extended a helping hand to Ukraine through crypto donations, donating a total of 1,500 ETH (about $5 million) to humanitarian and military support through Unchain Fund and Aid for Ukraine.
In September of the same year, he traveled to Kyiv to attend the Kyiv Tech Summit and ETHKyiv hackathon, expressing his support for Ukraine.
'I want to see Ethereum projects that are still thriving in the midst of war and understand the developers behind them.' He said, 'Ukraine might become the next Web3 hub.'
'Just focus on building Ethereum; why mix in politics?'
Vitalik faced criticism again but did not care. In an interview with Time, he candidly stated, 'One of the decisions I made in 2022 was to try to be more daring and not remain neutral. I would rather Ethereum offend certain people than become a hollow shell that represents nothing.'
This statement also indicates that Vitalik's scope of 'offense' is expanding, and social value has become the core of his focus. Even the NFT boom that benefited Ethereum that year could not escape Vitalik's sharp criticism.
'If crypto is just for people to buy and sell monkey pictures and get rich, it will lose its purpose for existence.'
Especially after the collapse of Luna and FTX, Vitalik believes that the real problem in the crypto world is no longer the security of the underlying protocols and their scalability, but how to achieve social value at the application layer.
He called on the community to build decentralized applications that could improve public governance, fund public goods, and promote transparent financial tools.
In the same year, in his blog post (What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me), he listed the application directions he looked forward to the most:
Scaling solutions centered around Layer 2 and Rollup;
Privacy protection technology based on zero-knowledge proofs;
DAO driven by public goods funding mechanisms;
Prediction markets and stablecoins that solve real-world problems.
After experiencing the controversy of the Merge, the impact of war, speculative frenzy, and industry collapse, Vitalik was no longer just a geek sitting behind the code. He took the initiative to step onto the front stage for the first time, participating in public issues as an actor and thinker.
His vision of an ideal nation began to take on new contours: not only a technical architecture but also a multidimensional experimental field coexisting with governance, freedom, and public value.
Dawn breaking in the night.
After the Merge was completed, Ethereum's technical roadmap entered a stable period.
At this moment, the NFT craze receded, and DeFi heat dissipated, causing the crypto industry to fall into anxiety over 'no new narratives.' During this stage, Vitalik continued to promote public goods funding and information finance concepts:
Supporting open-source development and community governance through Gitcoin and quadratic funding mechanisms;
Exploring prediction markets and data financial tools to make information a valuable and incentivized asset;
Advocating for more decentralized applications to focus on social issues and public governance rather than purely speculative tools.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT triggered a global wave of AI, and the Silicon Valley tech faction advocated for 'effective accelerationism (e/acc),' believing that technology and innovation should be as fast as possible, holding an optimistic and welcoming attitude towards AGI.
Vitalik, however, stood on the opposite side, proposing a more cautious path—'defensive acceleration (d/acc),' advocating that technological development should prioritize 'defense,' protecting democracy and decentralized order, which highly aligns with Ethereum's original intention. In his blog post (My techno-optimism), he warned of the centralization risks of AI: 'A government controlled by 45 people could determine the fate of billions.'
The awakening brought by AI intertwines with Ethereum's development in Vitalik's mind. In (Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again), he called for Ethereum to reclaim the early crypto spirit: privacy protection, open-source cooperation, and decentralized power.
This point was further emphasized in interviews: Ethereum is not an institutional tool but the foundational infrastructure for individual empowerment. Its purpose is to resist the centralization of power, not to become a new centralized order.
However, there is always a gap between ideals and the market.
In 2024, the crypto market did not follow Vitalik's guidance but headed in the direction he criticized. The privacy, Layer 2, and other technology narratives he advocated were neglected by the market, ETH prices remained sluggish for a long time, while MEME rose to the center stage, with Solana praised by some investors as the 'new Ethereum' due to its high-speed performance and MEME ecosystem explosion.
Market sentiment began to propagate claims that 'Ethereum has aged' and 'the foundation has lost its innovativeness,' with the Chinese community particularly vocal: the foundation was accused of frequently selling ETH, neglecting developer support, having conflicts of interest between researchers and external projects, and Vitalik being surrounded by sycophantic voices...
Vitalik did not hide his frustration on X: Crypto Twitter and VCs regarded 'the KOL gamble with 99% user losses' as the best product in the industry; the outside world knew nothing of the foundation's internal affairs but demanded he complete a thorough reform within two weeks. These voices once made him consider quitting, but every time he thought about giving up, there were always signals reminding him that 'it is worth continuing to fight':
'Do not self-deny; make yourself unshakable.'
Criticism remains, but change is happening.
In January 2025, Vitalik released a statement on X about significant reforms in the leadership structure of the Ethereum Foundation; in March, the Ethereum Foundation announced major personnel adjustments.
Former Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi transitioned to Chair of the Foundation;
Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak were promoted to new co-executive directors;
Core researcher Danny Ryan founded a new experimental organization, Etherealize, to accelerate technology deployment.
As circumstances changed, with Circle's IPO, the rise of stablecoins and RWA concepts, Ethereum once again became the focal point as core infrastructure.
Joseph Lubin, founder of Consensys, initiated 'ETH Reserve' through the US stock company SharpLink Gaming (SBET), becoming the 'Ethereum version of MicroStrategy.' Companies like BitMine, Bit Digital, and GameSquare followed suit, marking the start of the ETH reserve race.
The price of ETH doubled since April, with a monthly increase of 40% in July, as the market seemed to forget its doubts about Ethereum a few months ago.
Vitalik did not explicitly agree or disagree with the 'microstrategy' model, but at the beginning of July at EthCC, Vitalik Buterin once again issued a warning to the industry: Web3 is at a crossroads, and unless developers anchor their work in freedom, decentralization, and privacy, the industry risks betraying its founding principles.
'Ethereum is at a critical moment,' he said. 'The decentralized dream driving the blockchain revolution is gradually fading due to corporate involvement, political attention, and user convenience.'
On July 30, Ethereum celebrated its 10th anniversary.
Vitalik X's homepage reposted Ethereum Foundation member Binji's 'Reflections on the Ten Years of Ethereum':
'When banks collapse, cloud services fail, and servers are patched, Ethereum still runs. We continue to move forward. Ten years online, always forward.'
Interestingly, Vitalik recently reposted a favorite lyric from the song (Starshine) by S.H.E:
'If the night is not dark, what dreams do we need to yearn for?'
Dawn will be the reward for those who persevere.
This seems to be the best note on the journey of Ethereum and Vitalik over the past two years: in the dark, he chose to persevere and wait for dawn.
