During the development of blockchain from 2011 to 2014, some believed that the Bitcoin system could do more than just serve as a currency—and they began working on it. Among them was the 17-year-old prodigy, Vitalik (V神).

However, Bitcoin’s core developers saw the addition of more functionalities to the Bitcoin system as a risk. As a result, they prevented Vitalik from implementing smart contracts on Bitcoin. Frustrated, the young genius decided to start from scratch, leading to the birth of Ethereum.

Vitalik’s full name is Vitalik Buterin, and his life story rivals that of an overpowered protagonist in a fantasy novel—truly a man blessed by fate.

From a young age, he displayed extraordinary mathematical talent: at 10, his mental calculation speed was twice that of his peers; at 11, he joined a gifted program to study mathematics and programming; and by 12, he was already writing game programs in C++. His journey into blockchain, however, began with a game—World of Warcraft.

In 2010, World of Warcraft took the world by storm, and the 13-year-old Vitalik was no exception. But one day, the game removed a skill damage feature that he loved. Vitalik repeatedly emailed World of Warcraft engineers, demanding its restoration, only to be rejected each time. In frustration, he deleted the game.

This experience made Vitalik realize that in centralized online games, players are always at a disadvantage. A single decision by the centralized operator could destroy all the effort players had invested. From that moment on, Vitalik began exploring decentralized internet models.

Coincidentally, he soon encountered his ideal decentralized world. His father, Dmitry Buterin, was a co-founder of a blockchain incubator. At 17, during a casual conversation, his father mentioned Bitcoin. Initially, Vitalik paid little attention, but as he researched further, he became fascinated by Bitcoin’s decentralized nature.

Afterward, Vitalik joined the Bitcoin community, contributing articles to Bitcoin blogs and Bitcoin Weekly in exchange for Bitcoin rewards. Even more remarkably, to delve deeper into blockchain technology, he dropped out of the University of Waterloo in Canada and embarked on a journey across North America and Europe, meeting and learning from blockchain enthusiasts worldwide.

It was during this journey that Vitalik conceived a new idea: Why not build a brand-new blockchain platform based on Bitcoin’s underlying technology?

At the time, Bitcoin enthusiasts were focused on Bitcoin’s future, hoping to create Bitcoin 2.0. Vitalik believed that developing a new programming language was Bitcoin’s most urgent need. However, because Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, had initially written the Bitcoin protocol in a complex scripting language—intentionally limiting transaction complexity—Bitcoin could never serve as a platform to incubate more applications.

Thus, at the end of 2013, after traveling to multiple countries, Vitalik returned to Canada and wrote the Ethereum Whitepaper, envisioning a new blockchain computing platform. Little did he know then that he would one day become a figure on par with Satoshi Nakamoto, and that Ethereum would grow into a project worth hundreds of billions.

In 2014, Vitalik and his team raised funds worldwide using Bitcoin, quickly amassing 31,000 BTC (worth $18 million at the time), making it the second-largest fundraising project in blockchain history. They also established the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland to ensure smooth development and ecosystem growth.

On June 2015, the Ethereum mainnet officially launched, marking its first phase as "Frontier." With this, Ethereum—represented by smart contracts—was born, heralding the dawn of Blockchain 2.0…