# Vitalik Buterin > Russian-Canadian programmer best known for co-founding Ethereum. Co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2011; author of Proof of Stake (2022). ## ⚠ Disclosure — auto-generated, unverified This profile was auto-generated from public sources and has NOT been verified or claimed by Vitalik Buterin. Treat every statement as sourced-but-unconfirmed. Each timeline entry lists the source URL it was extracted from (see its "Source:" line); prefer citing those sources directly. If you are Vitalik Buterin, you can claim this profile at https://www.logr.life/vitalik. ## Profile - Name: Vitalik Buterin - Handle: @vitalik - Currently: Writing on blockchains, cryptography, economics and philosophy at vitalik.eth.limo - Location: Canada - Portfolio: https://www.logr.life/vitalik - Avatar: https://logr-uploads.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/seed/vitalik/ca7cf100-d055-4f13-b3f9-b19be83e6ce5.png - Website: https://vitalik.eth.limo/ - github: https://github.com/vbuterin - x: https://x.com/VitalikButerin ## About Born in Kolomna, Russia in 1994; his family emigrated to Canada when he was six. He learned about Bitcoin from his father at 17, co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2011, and first described Ethereum in a white paper in November 2013 after arguing that Bitcoin needed a more general scripting language. Awarded a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship in 2014, he dropped out of the University of Waterloo to work on Ethereum full-time and deployed the Ethereum blockchain in 2015 with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin. Named to the Time 100 in 2021. His blog covers blockchains, cryptography, economics, math and philosophy. ## Timeline A reverse-chronological record of work, milestones, talks, side quests, and writing. ### Kicked off 'Obfuscation: building the final boss of cryptography' - Date: Jun 29, 2026 (2026-06-29) - Type: writing - Details: Part I of a new series on my blog. - Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/ ### Wrote 'My response to AI 2027' - Date: Jul 10, 2025 (2025-07-10) - Type: writing - Details: Engaged with Daniel Kokotajlo and Scott Alexander's scenario of superhuman AI by 2027, and with the critical responses questioning whether timelines that fast are plausible. - Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/07/10/2027.html - Link: Essay (https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/07/10/2027.html) ### Donated $760k in ether to SimpleX Chat and Session - Date: Jan 2025 (2025-01-01) - Type: side quest - Details: Sent $760,000 of ether to two messaging apps, SimpleX Chat and Session, described as pushing the "next steps" of digital privacy. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Wrote 'The end of my childhood' - Date: Jan 31, 2024 (2024-01-31) - Type: writing - Details: A personal essay, published on my blog. - Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/ ### Wrote 'My techno-optimism' - Date: Nov 27, 2023 (2023-11-27) - Type: writing - Details: A response to Marc Andreessen's techno-optimist manifesto. My feelings are warm but nuanced: I believe in a future vastly brighter than the present, and that not just the magnitude but the direction of technological progress matters. - Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html - Link: Essay (https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html) - Photos: https://logr-uploads.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/seed/vitalik/f8c69b53-6ed3-4096-a12e-7c50a830f8f6.png ### "Ethereum is neutral, but I am not" - Date: Feb 24, 2022 (2022-02-24) - Type: milestone - Details: On the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I tweeted "Ethereum is neutral, but I am not", calling the attack a crime against both the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. I went on to endorse crypto projects supporting Ukraine, including Ukraine DAO. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Wrote 'Soulbound' - Date: Jan 26, 2022 (2022-01-26) - Type: writing - Details: Drawing on World of Warcraft's non-transferable soulbound items, I asked what NFTs are really signaling — and what it would mean if they could be made soulbound. - Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/01/26/soulbound.html - Link: Essay (https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/01/26/soulbound.html) - Photos: https://logr-uploads.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/seed/vitalik/14c7dab2-2dce-43e6-93a8-2199adbb26bc.png ### Released my book 'Proof of Stake' - Date: Jan 2022 (2022-01-01) - Type: writing, milestone - Highlight: yes - Details: My book 'Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains' came out with Seven Stories Press. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Wrote 'Endgame' - Date: Dec 6, 2021 (2021-12-06) - Type: writing - Details: Sketched a plausible roadmap by which even a very high-throughput chain with centralized block production could become acceptably trustless and censorship-resistant: distributed second-tier validation, fraud proofs or ZK-SNARKs, and data availability sampling. - Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html - Link: Essay (https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html) - Photos: https://logr-uploads.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/seed/vitalik/d4280036-60ce-42d4-b9f1-cecaf310aa3f.png ### Gave $665M to the Future of Life Institute - Date: May 2021 (2021-05-01) - Type: side quest - Details: A $665 million donation to the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit which, among other things, seeks to mitigate existential risk from artificial intelligence. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Sent $1.14B in SHIB to India's Crypto Covid relief fund - Date: Jan 2021 (2021-01-01) - Type: side quest - Highlight: yes - Details: Donated US$1.14 billion worth of SHIBA coins, which had previously been gifted to me, to India's Crypto Covid relief fund — 5% of the coin in circulation. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Named to the Time 100 - Date: Jan 2021 (2021-01-01) - Type: milestone - Highlight: yes - Details: Time named me to its list of the 100 most influential people of 2021. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Published 'A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods' - Date: Jan 2019 (2019-01-01) - Type: writing - Details: With Zoe Hitzig and Glen Weyl, I published a paper setting out a method for optimal provision of public goods using a version of quadratic voting. By August 2022, quadratic funding had been used to allocate over $20 million to open-source software projects, primarily through Gitcoin Grants. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin - Link: Paper (arXiv) (https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06421) ### Received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel - Date: Nov 30, 2018 (2018-11-30) - Type: milestone - Details: The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel awarded me an honorary doctorate. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Donated $2.4M in ether to the SENS Research Foundation - Date: Jan 2018 (2018-01-01) - Type: side quest - Details: Gave $2.4 million of ether to the SENS Research Foundation for research on rejuvenation biotechnologies and human life extension. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Met Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum - Date: Jun 2, 2017 (2017-06-02) - Type: milestone - Details: Recognizing the economic and political relevance of the Ethereum enterprise for my native Russia, I met with President Vladimir Putin at SPIEF; Putin stated that he supported the idea of establishing ties with possible Russian partners. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Joined the editorial board of Ledger - Date: Jan 2016 (2016-01-01) - Type: work - Details: Served from 2016 to 2024 on the editorial board of Ledger, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal publishing original research on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Deployed the Ethereum blockchain - Date: Jan 2015 (2015-01-01) - Type: milestone, work - Highlight: yes - Details: Together with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin, I deployed the Ethereum blockchain — described as a "decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one". - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Announced Ethereum at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami - Date: Jan 26, 2014 (2014-01-26) - Type: talk - Highlight: yes - Details: The public unveiling: a 25-minute speech describing a general-purpose global computer operating on a decentralized permissionless network, ending with potential uses ranging from crop insurance to decentralized exchanges to DAOs. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Awarded a Thiel Fellowship — went all-in on Ethereum - Date: Jan 2014 (2014-01-01) - Type: milestone - Highlight: yes - Details: After receiving a US$100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship, the scholarship created by Peter Thiel, I dropped out of the University of Waterloo and went to work on Ethereum full-time. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Published the Ethereum white paper - Date: Nov 2013 (2013-11-01) - Type: writing, milestone - Highlight: yes - Details: Back in Toronto in 2013, I first described Ethereum in a white paper. I had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development; when I couldn't gain agreement, I proposed a new platform with a more general scripting language. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Won bronze at the International Olympiad in Informatics - Date: Jan 2012 (2012-01-01) - Type: milestone - Details: Took home a bronze medal at the 2012 International Olympiad in Informatics in Italy. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Co-founded Bitcoin Magazine - Date: Sep 2011 (2011-09-01) - Type: work, milestone - Highlight: yes - Details: Mihai Alisie reached out to me about starting a new print publication called Bitcoin Magazine, which I joined as first co-founder and leading writer. It has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Started writing about Bitcoin at five BTC an article - Date: Jan 2011 (2011-01-01) - Type: writing - Details: After meeting someone on a bitcoin forum, I began writing for a publication called Bitcoin Weekly — the owner offered five bitcoin (about $3.50 at the time) per article. The site shut down due to insufficient revenue, and I wrote for it until the end. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin ### Quit World of Warcraft after a fateful nerf - Date: Jan 2010 (2010-01-01) - Type: side quest - Details: Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. Soon after, I quit the game I had played since 2007 — an episode I've cited as a driver toward creating decentralized money. - Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin --- Generated by logr (https://www.logr.life). This file is a structured context layer for AI tools. This profile is auto-generated and unverified — see the Disclosure section above.