Ling Ting | "V God" is not a God: 48-hour personal observation of Vitalik's trip to Hangzhou
Author: Tang Xialing Ye Zewei
This may be Vitalik's tenth visit to China.
This trip, his itinerary was fully arranged. After giving a speech at the Shanghai Wanxiang Summit, he rushed to Hangzhou and Shenzhen non-stop to promote Ethereum 2.0.
This time, he chose colleges and universities as the event venues, because "they are the next generation of developers."
In 2014, 20-year-old Vitalik founded Ethereum, opening the "blockchain 2.0 era". This is how smart contracts emerged. Since then, tens of thousands of projects have issued coins on Ethereum, starting the ICO frenzy. Ethereum's token ETH also jumped from $1 to a maximum of $1,506, becoming the second largest digital currency in the world by market value, second only to Bitcoin. Vitalik himself is also called "V God" by the blockchain circle.
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Mobile emoticons: Respond to you with "OK" + "smile"
September 21, Zhejiang University. There were a lot of people who came to listen to his sharing. When he took the stage, there was a commotion in the crowd, and everyone got up to take pictures. "Squeak..." He picked up the microphone and made a strange sound. The students at the scene were immediately amused by him.
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Vitalik pouted
At noon, a group of 10 people walked into the restaurant for dinner. He walked straight to the front and was the first to sit on the chair in the middle of the round table. A second later, he found that everyone around him was looking at him, as if something was wrong, he immediately got up, and sat straight on the seat closest to the door.
During the dinner, someone introduced him to the development of blockchain in Hangzhou. Most of the time, he nodded politely, and when he heard what he understood, he said in Chinese friendly: "OK" + smile.
The waiter brought the fruit, and he said happily: "Watermelon." Seeing his favorite fish served, he blurted out in Chinese: "Wow, there are fish to eat." He quickly picked up the spoon and scooped it into a bowl.
He once studied Chinese, and his current Chinese level can maintain basic daily communication. He said that Chinese eating culture is very interesting: "In the United States, everyone can only order their own dishes, but in China everyone orders together. Westerners say that private is free, and public is anti-freedom. But When it comes to eating, China is more free."
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The one on the left is Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, and the one on the right is James, the chief architect of Bytom Chain
His companion told me that carrying a pen with him has been his habit for many years. Whether he is eating or on the plane, he is thinking, and often records a string of symbols. When communicating with you, although I don't look directly at you, my ears are always listening and my head is always turning. The ability to capture effective information is particularly strong, especially numbers and words.
I asked him, "Has anyone ever said you were a child prodigy?"
When he turned his head, he suddenly looked like a deflated ball, covering his face with his hands, full of helplessness.
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The open ecology opened up his curiosity
His father was a computer scientist, and he received his first computer when he was 4 years old. Later, he immigrated to Canada from Russia. In the third grade of elementary school, he could do mental arithmetic at twice the speed of ordinary people. At the age of 12, he wrote a small game in C++.
Before the age of 16, he liked to play "World of Warcraft" and obtained a very high level. But once, Blizzard, the production company of "World of Warcraft", took action on his beloved game character and canceled the "life siphon" skill. He contacted Blizzard engineers many times, and the reply he got was: for the balance of game characters, it cannot be restored.
"That time, I cried and fell asleep." From then on, he realized how terrible the consequences of centralized services would be.
At 17, he encountered Bitcoin.
The open ecology of Bitcoin opened up his curiosity. Everyone can participate freely and equally. No one is at the top of this ecology. A group of people can cooperate to create a currency and realize a certain value.
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The world was not created by the brightest minds
Today, although Ethereum has become a world-renowned underlying public chain, it did not go so smoothly in the early days of Ethereum's development. In 2015, it was very difficult for Vitalik to raise funds in China for the first time.
By chance, he met Xiao Feng, chairman of Wanxiang Blockchain Lab.
“At a time when Ethereum needs a lot of money, Wanxiang bought $500,000 worth of Ethereum, which is a timely gift.”
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V gave a speech at the Wanxiang Summit
I thought tech geeks would agree with the statement that "technology changes the world", but Vitalik's underlying thinking is not like that.
Due to the world influence of Ethereum, Vitalik has communicated with leaders of many countries. These include: Russia, UK, Estonia, Singapore, Thailand, etc.
"Most countries have a group of people who are interested in blockchain and how we do things with this technology."
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Technical problems are easy to solve, but human problems give me a headache
In the past 5 years of working on Ethereum, Vitalik found that technical problems can find good solutions most of the time, but human problems give him a headache.
Some of the founding partners left before Ethereum, and many fought each other with different interests and ideas. "It's giving me a headache, it's really hard to keep everyone happy."
Different economic mechanisms allow large groups of people to cooperate and learn how to run different projects without relying too much on centralized operators telling everyone what to do. But when it comes to specific individual identities, it is difficult to balance everyone's ideas. After all, everyone has their own aspirations. At present, getting along with people is based on an ability that Vitalik needs to learn.
Wherever he goes, he will always be surrounded by all kinds of people who like him, asking for autographs, group photos, and consulting various questions about Ethereum.
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I enjoy technical research more than financial freedom
Earlier this year, Vitalik announced his own cryptocurrency portfolio and other sources of income. At the age of 25, he has a huge fortune.
But for him, having a lot of wealth just gives him a sense of security, and he no longer has to worry about the future. "I don't like to squander money. I have given a $5 million grant to Stanford University. I have donated to the Gates Foundation. There are also research institutions, universities and charities."
I asked him: "Then if someone asked you about the price of ETH, how would you answer it?"
"No answer..." He showed embarrassment.
Vitalik has many dreams, the biggest dream is to create a more open and fair world with the help of blockchain.
He said: It is a very interesting time in human civilization, many things are changing at the same time. The tools we use for collaboration need to improve rapidly over time. "In this world, everyone has different ideas. I hope to use blockchain technology to provide some new possibilities for human collaboration."
"Then imagine what you will look like ten years from now." I asked.
He straightened up on the high chair, took a long breath, and looked embarrassed again.
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Both the biggest achievements and the biggest anxieties have come from Ethereum
In the past few years, the thing that makes him happiest is the rapid development of the ecology of Ethereum. Three years ago, if something went wrong, he had to fix it himself every time, and now, there are eight different teams building the Ethereum 2.0 client.
They are distributed in various parts of the world, separated and communicated with each other, and finally realize the same protocol, so that Ethereum 2.0 clients can communicate with each other and accept each other's blocks. They conduct weekly conference calls and hold workshops approximately every two to three months.
"I think this way of working individually and then merging together to keep things in sync has been very successful."
What frustrates him the most is that the direction of the virtual currency is still unclear. In 2015, although some community members were curious about Ethereum, the Bitcoin community said: no, no, no, they are liars, don’t break the monopoly of Bitcoin. Since then, the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities have completely split.
Up to now, there is still a bubble in the digital currency market. The core developers of Ethereum represented by Vitalik always try their best to avoid communication for the purpose of making money. They prefer R&D, academic and technological exchanges and explorations.
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Vitalik and Babbitt"Content group"
"You have been to China so many times, do you like China?" Finally, I asked.
“It’s okay. In the US and Europe, people talk about blockchain and it’s more about ideology, about freedom, decentralization, and open source. In Asia, people talk more about cryptocurrencies and projects that use tokens to do things. U.S. and China In the blockchain ecosystem, many VC-funded projects have a lot of money. In Europe, there are fewer such funds, and European cultural and technical factors are stronger, and many people do things for the project without expecting to get paid." He After finishing speaking, he shrugged and spread his hands.
After finishing his speech at Zhejiang University, he walked out of the building quickly. There were several steps from the building to the playground. He suddenly jumped down and skipped lightly, feeling relieved. Then, walk away from the crowd quickly.
This scene was the most relaxing moment for him during the two days I followed him.
Regarding Ethereum 2.0, please pay attention to Vitalik's speech report in Hangzhou: "When will Ethereum 2.0 come? Is Polkadot an enemy or a friend? Vitalik's on-site narration》
