Ethereum Ten Years: Vitalik's Evolution of Thought Journey

On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was launched.

Bitcoin grows organically like a myth, depersonalized and unwritten by anyone; Ethereum, on the other hand, resembles an unfinished script, with the author never leaving the stage.

Vitalik Buterin, the young and famous technological idealist, has spent a decade injecting personal philosophy, values, and struggles into code.

From the initial vision of a "world computer" to the governance reflections during the DAO crisis, from the merge to the deep transformations of the foundation... Every evolution of Ethereum has left traces of Vitalik's thoughts.

Ten years of Ethereum, also ten years of the evolution of Vitalik's thoughts.

The Starting Point of Idealists

After the 2008 financial crisis, Bitcoin emerged, sounding the horn of rebellion against the old world. This emerging technology changed the life trajectory of 17-year-old Vitalik Buterin.

In 2011, Vitalik learned about Bitcoin from his father. He began searching for Bitcoin forums online and found people willing to pay him in Bitcoin for his articles. Vitalik's articles quickly gained attention, and he co-founded "Bitcoin Magazine" with Mihai Alisie.

In 2013, after traveling around the world visiting Bitcoin enthusiasts, Vitalik realized that Bitcoin's scripting capabilities were too limited. He proposed to create a Bitcoin version with a Turing-complete programming language to provide all digital services.

In November of the same year, 19-year-old Vitalik released the Ethereum whitepaper. This whitepaper quickly swept through the entire crypto community, making people realize for the first time that blockchain is not just about currency, but can also become a global decentralized platform.

At that time, Vitalik was an extremely pure idealist who believed that most social ills were attributed to centralization.

On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was launched. The vision of the "world computer" moved from the white paper to reality.

The Collision of Ideals and Reality

In the early days of Ethereum, Vitalik was a pure technological utopian. He firmly believed that the ultimate significance of blockchain lies in decentralization, emphasizing that anyone can freely build applications on Ethereum without the need for approval from a central authority.

However, the DAO crisis in 2016 became a turning point. Hackers exploited a vulnerability in the smart contract to steal approximately 3.6 million Ether. Vitalik faced a conflict between protecting investors' assets and adhering to the principles of decentralized technology.

In the end, Vitalik chose a compromise and pragmatic approach: advocating for the recovery of stolen funds through a hard fork and allowing the entire community to vote on the decision. This decision successfully stabilized the market and led to the split of Ethereum into ETH and ETC.

After the crisis, Vitalik began to reflect on the security of smart contracts, proposing the introduction of stricter security audits and formal verification. He discussed governance issues in public speeches, emphasizing that "community collaboration" rather than technical absolutism is the key to Ethereum's success.

The ICO frenzy in 2017 and the congestion caused by CryptoKitties made Vitalik realize the urgency of scalability issues. He proposed EIP-1559 with community developers, introducing a dynamic Gas fee mechanism to promote Ethereum's transition from PoW to PoS, reducing energy consumption and increasing transaction throughput.

Having gone through these challenges, Vitalik has transformed from a "tech saint" who pursued extreme decentralization to a builder who must consider security, governance, and social value. Throughout this process, he gradually formed his own pragmatic philosophy.

From Technology to Society

Between 2020 and 2022, Vitalik's thoughts underwent another important shift: he began to confront the complexities of the real world, moving from pure technological idealism to a multidimensional consideration that takes into account social governance, public responsibility, and real politics.

In 2020, Vitalik proposed that blockchain can never fully achieve "trustlessness," as social contracts and power dynamics in the real world cannot be completely dissolved. In 2021, he criticized the single-token voting governance model and called for the establishment of diverse consensus and soft governance mechanisms.

2022 was a year of significant challenges for Ethereum. The transition from PoW to PoS faced considerable criticism, with some even accusing Vitalik of being Ethereum's "dictator." However, Vitalik and the foundation remained committed to advancing the merge. On September 15, Ethereum officially completed the Merge, and PoW exited the historical stage.

In February of the same year, the Russia-Ukraine war broke out. Vitalik rarely broke his "neutrality" and publicly condemned Putin, providing support to Ukraine through crypto donations. He stated: "I would rather Ethereum offend some people than have it become a shell that represents nothing."

After the collapse of Luna and FTX, Vitalik believes that the real issue in the crypto world is no longer the security and scalability of the underlying protocols, but how to realize social value at the application layer. He calls for the construction of decentralized applications that can improve public governance, fund public goods, and promote transparent financial tools.

After experiencing these events, Vitalik is no longer just a geek sitting behind the code. For the first time, he actively stepped into the spotlight, participating in public issues as an actor and thinker. His ideal state began to take on new contours: not only a technological framework but also a multidimensional experimental field where governance, freedom, and public values coexist.

Persist in the darkness

After the Merge, Ethereum's technical roadmap enters a stable period. Vitalik continuously promotes public goods funding and the concept of information finance during this phase, advocating for more decentralized applications to focus on social issues and public governance.

In the face of the AI wave, Vitalik proposed the concept of "defensive acceleration," advocating that technological development should prioritize "defense" to protect democracy and decentralized order. He calls for Ethereum to reclaim the early spirit of crypto: privacy protection, open-source collaboration, and decentralized power.

However, the cryptocurrency market in 2024 did not follow Vitalik's guidance. The technological narratives he advocated, such as privacy and Layer 2, were neglected by the market, and the price of ETH remained sluggish for a long time, while MEME took center stage. The market began to popularize the saying "Ethereum has aged," and the foundation faced numerous criticisms.

Faced with doubts, Vitalik does not hide his frustration, but he chooses to move forward. At the beginning of 2025, the Ethereum Foundation underwent significant reforms, adjusting its leadership structure and personnel arrangements.

With Circle's IPO and the rise of stablecoins and the RWA concept, Ethereum has once again become the focus. Multiple companies have launched "ETH reserve" plans, and the price of ETH has doubled since April.

On the 10th anniversary of Ethereum's launch, Vitalik reiterated his philosophy: Web3 is at a crossroads, and developers should anchor their work in freedom, decentralization, and privacy to avoid betraying the founding principles.

After ten years of trials and tribulations, Vitalik chose to persevere in the darkness, waiting for dawn. As he recently shared in a lyric: "If the night is not dark, why long for sweet dreams? Dawn will be the reward for those who hold on."