Vitalik Buterin, popularly known as the co-founder of Ethereum, is a 28-year-old Russian-Canadian programmer and writer. After Bitcoin, Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap. In 2013, when Buterin was just 19 years old, he laid the foundations of Ethereum and wrote a white paper that sketched “a next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform.”
Initially, when Buterin did not have the funds required to invest in either Bitcoin or crypto mining, he decided to be a blog writer and write blogs for Bitcoin payments. Buterin’s father, a computer scientist, was the first person who introduced him to Bitcoin when he was in his late teens. Other than Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin is involved in a handful of blockchain projects, which includes L4, Plasma Group, and more. Later in 2014, Buterin announced the launch of Ethereum at the Bitcoin Conference in Miami.
According to Forbes, as of 30 September 2022, Buterin’s net worth was estimated at around $400 million. The biggest challenge faced by Ethereum was the massive energy consumption due to its proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. To overcome this issue, Ethereum transitioned to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model this year. The PoS model is a less energy-intensive method and is believed to reduce the network’s power consumption by 99%.
