Ethereum's Creator Is Concerned About Crypto's Future

Ethereum's Creator Is Concerned About Crypto's Future

 

Ethereum is a decentralised blockchain technology that creates a peer-to-peer network for securely executing and verifying smart contract code. Participants can transact with one another without relying on a trusted central authority. Ethereum allows smart contracts and decentralised applications, or Dapps, to be written and run without the risk of downtime, fraud, control, or third-party interference.

Vitalik Buterin is the most powerful figure in the crypto world. Buterin created Ethereum nine years ago as a method to use the blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin for purposes other than cash. The fundamental layer of blockchain technology has evolved. What advocates claim will be a new, open-source, decentralised internet?

Ether, the platform's native currency, has surpassed Bitcoin as the second most valuable cryptocurrency, powering a trillion-dollar ecosystem that rivals Visa in terms of transaction volume. To date, Ethereum has brought thousands of unbanked people around the world into financial systems, enabled unrestricted cross-border capital flow, and provided the infrastructure for entrepreneurs to create a variety of new products, ranging from payment systems to prediction markets, digital swap meets, and medical-research hubs.

Buterin has watched the universe he created evolve with a mixture of pride and horror as the cryptocurrency's value and volume have soared. Ethereum has made a small group of white men extremely wealthy. It has released pollutants into the atmosphere and a vehicle of tax evasion, money laundering, and mind-boggling scams.

In an 80-minute interview in his hotel room, the Russian-born Canadian explains: "Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong."

Buterin is worried about the dangers of over eager investors, the soaring transaction fees, and the shameless displays of wealth that have come to dominate the public perception of crypto.

"The peril is that you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling," he says, referring to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an über popular NFT collection of garish primate cartoons that have become a digital-age status symbol for millionaires, including Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, and which have traded for more than $1 million a pop. "There are definitely lots of people that are just buying yachts and Lambos."

Buterin expects that Ethereum will serve as a platform for a variety of sociopolitical experiments, such as more equitable voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, and public-works projects. Above all, he wants the platform to offer a counterweight to authoritarian governments and to wrest control of our digital lives from Silicon Valley.

However, he admits that his vision for Ethereum's transformative power is in danger of being hijacked by avarice. As a result, he has grudgingly begun to play a larger public role in moulding the country's destiny.

"If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable," he says, reedy voice rising and falling as he fidgets his hands and sticks his toes between the cushions of a lumpy gray couch. "And those are often far from what’s actually best for the world."

The irony is that, despite all of Buterin’s cachet, he may not have the ability to prevent Ethereum from veering off course. That’s because he designed it as a decentralised platform, responsive not only to his own vision but also to the will of its builders, investors, and ever-sprawing community. Buterin is not the formal leader of Ethereum, and is fundamentally opposed to the idea of anyone holding unilateral power over the future of the blockchain technology.