Vitalik Buterin’s first date with the Bitcoin community dates back to 2011. He started participating in ‘Bitcointalk’, a forum created by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was then that he co-founded and began writing articles for Bitcoin Magazine. He began traveling to speak with BTC developers around the world in an attempt to build a new and potentially superior iteration of the Bitcoin blockchain.
In late 2013, Buterin outlined the idea for another digital currency in a white paper and sent it to some of his friends. The vision was to develop a blockchain with an integrated programming language and a platform for decentralized applications, a kind of “android of the world of cryptocurrencies.”
Subsequently, Ethereum was officially Announced on Bitcointalk on January 23, 2014. Exactly nine years have passed since then. The history of the blockchain, from the whitepaper to the DAO attack, the hard fork, scalability issues, and the most recent merger, has been anything but ordinary.
“Welcome to the New Beginning”
Buterin revealed that the core developers alongside him were Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and Jeffrey Wilcke, while Anthony Di Iorio, Mihai Alisie, Joseph Lubin, and Stephan Tual were named core non-development members. Buterin’s comment, titled “Welcome to the New Beginning,” noted:
“Ethereum is a Turing complete, stateful, modular contract scripting system married to a blockchain and developed with a philosophy of simplicity, universal accessibility and generalizability. Our goal is to provide a platform for decentralized applications – an android of the cryptocurrency world, where all efforts can share a common set of APIs, trustless interactions and no compromises.”
While explaining his creation, Buterin called on the community to join the new ecosystem as volunteers, developers, investors, and evangelists. The goal was to enable a “fundamentally different paradigm for the Internet and the relationships it provides.”
Challenging the idea of ’Bitcoin dominance maximalism’
The same year, Buterin challenged Bitcoin Dominance Maximalism, a school of thought that is still very relevant in the crypto ecosystem. His treaty essentially separated people who simply want to improve Bitcoin from those who can be called “Bitcoin dominance maximalists,” often categorized as aggressive, hostile, and toxic.
This was the first time he questioned the ideology. Since then, Ethereum has become the most consistent and high-profile target of criticism from the proud “Bitcoin maximalist”. Despite the differences in culture and operation, Ethereum has still managed to maintain its position as the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, nearly a decade into its existence, even as the most prominent altcoins faded.
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