It’s odd to think what my life would be like right now if Vitalik Buterin hadn’t come into the world. I wouldn’t be writing on this web site, my career at Bloomberg News wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting after I began covering crypto in 2015. And I wouldn’t have written a book. Yet, here we are.

The inventor of Ethereum is not just a mad-scientist level genius, he’s genuinely a nice, generous, compassionate and funny person. He graciously spent hours with me doing interviews for the history of Ethereum I wrote and has always been willing to help me understand issues in Ethereum. That doesn’t mean our interview here got off to a good start — it didn’t! — but I think it got much better as we went along. It’s a somewhat fraught time in Ethereum. The price of Ether has fallen from an all-time high just above $4,800 in November to about $3,275 today. The network is undergoing its biggest change since inception in 2015 as it moves to a consensus model call proof-of-stake. The larger process is known as ETH 2.0 and will be conducted through an update called The Merge that Vitalik still expects to happen in the late spring of this year. Many people, however, are questioning this timing. It’s never a bad time to speak with Vitalik, but right now seems quite rich in topics.

Read on to hear us talk about vulnerability and blockchain, what is time, his latest update on ETH 2.0 and if he sees himself doing this for the rest of his life. Oh, and my sons — ages 9 and 13 — get to ask Vitalik a question too.

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Matt Leising: So to begin, for any readers who don't know, you and I have had many conversations over the years, mostly for my book Out of the Ether, where I think we spoke for more than 10 hours over several different interviews about your early life, about high school, about Bitcoin and how you came up with the idea for Ethereum and the co-founders and all of that. So I'd recommend anyone who wants the full story to check out my book, but I was hoping today to ask you some things that I wanted to but didn't get around to when I was reporting on the book. So to that end, your early life was spent in Russia, and then you moved to Toronto with your family soon after. I was wondering if you could share a favorite memory from your childhood.

Vitalik Buterin: That is a very broad and open-ended question. I'm generally not good at broad and open-ended questions.

ML: Is there a time in childhood that you remember being happiest or a time that you look back most fondly upon?

VB: No. I feel like all of my childhood had happy parts.

ML: You told me the story of when you flew from Russia to Toronto on Lufthansa one of the flight attendants gave you a rubber ducky.

VB: Yes.

ML: Do you, you still have that rubber ducky by any chance?

VB: I do not. I mean, it may well be still with my parents.

ML: And another one of my favorite stories of your early life that you shared with me was your love of bunnies. The Encyclopedia of Bunnies that you wrote when I believe you were seven years old. Do you still love bunnies?

VB: I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think bunnies are lovely. I definitely wish the world had more of them. I also love other animals too.

ML: One of the things that impressed me when I was looking into your history and your writing as a high school student for Bitcoin Magazine, which you co-founded with Mihai Alisie, was that you're a very good writer. I was wondering if there was a moment when you realized that you were a good writer and you had the ability to take complicated things and make them understandable for people.

VB: I guess writing wasn't like, it was definitely not what I expected myself to get into back before I was in the crypto discussion. When I first joined the Bitcoin community with this opportunity to write for Bitcoin Weekly and then write for Bitcoin Magazine, it just happened to be the first thing that I saw. And I definitely did not think of myself as an exceptional writer. But people wanted me to write things and I was happy to write things.

VB: I was definitely always happy to see people appreciating my work. I definitely did not recognize other people thought anything of my writing until probably close to two years, it was probably sometime in 2013 when I actually started talking to more people from the Bitcoin community and I realized how many of them actually read Bitcoin Magazine. At the beginning my mindset was just that I was doing what I could. And I think I didn't really realize I was good at the task until at least a couple of years into doing it. And I'm sure I got quite a bit better along the way. So I guess that's probably part of why I've continued doing a lot of writing ever since.

ML: Crypto, like anything else, is a story. And I think if you can effectively communicate that story, which I think you do, it's a very powerful way to bring people along and to get them to understand that this is a new sort of path that we're talking about. Do you feel that way?

VB: Let’s see, how I would I express my opinion on this. There's a lot of people who are attracted to the crypto space because of vague intuitions that they have about either values that the crypto space has or things that are interesting in the crypto space. Whether it's things like openness and decentralization, or having a permissionless financial system or whatever other things people get excited about. But there's a difference between kind of vague intuitions and a fully flushed out vision that we actually talk in a lot more detail about. What is it that we're actually trying to accomplish? What's the value that we're really trying to provide here?

Read it here

VB: And how do things actually work at a technical level, what kinds of things could people build? All of those details are something that I think a lot of people don't realize that they need, but it's something that they really do [need]. It’s something that they're definitely very grateful for. All of those different kinds of writing are definitely something that I try to do when I can.

ML: It seems to me knowing about your high school experience and how you were really good at a lot of different subjects, from Latin or Greek to chemistry to calculus, it seems like you move through tough subjects easily. And then you went off once you realized that you wanted to know the people in the Bitcoin world personally, you went on your travels and you've kind of been on the move a lot ever since. Definitely before the pandemic, that is. Do you think of yourself as a restless spirit? Is that something in you that you like to keep moving and try to keep challenging yourself? Is that how you think of yourself?

VB: Hmm. I think a lot of traveling is definitely about curiosity. I want to see what kinds of people there are, what kinds of communities there are. If I see something about there being an interesting crypto community someplace, or an interesting crypto project, it always makes me just want to understand more. I think one of the things I definitely got from Abelard [his high school in Toronto] is this spirit of combining very different experiences and very different disciplines. Looking at things from a perspective that's inspired both by the community and by economics, which is itself inspired by calculus. Looking at it from the point of view of things that you know about specific cultures, even possibly from the point of view of other disciplines, like biology. Having all of these different viewpoints, whether you're thinking about different intellectual perspectives or having more on the ground information of how this this particular group of people live.

VB: Like, these are the internal struggles of this particular group. I think having a lot of those perspectives and being able to combine a lot of those perspectives together is something that can give you a perspective that’s unique, that a lot of people don't easily have unless they actually work hard to get it.

“The community already has the muscle to go against either myself or the core developers on really controversial decisions. ”

ML: That’s what you ultimately brought to the world with Ethereum, where it wasn't pitched or gauged to one thing. It was this broad platform of a global distributed network of computers where you could then put whatever you wanted on top of it. Does that make sense to you? In the book I said you wanted to give the world a canvas and then people could make whatever kind of art they wanted.

VB: Yeah. There's definitely more ways to be in Ethereum then there are ways to be a Bitcoiner, and that's definitely something that's a very real difference between Ethereum and basically any of the blockchains that came before. If you're just limited to a couple of applications, then you have traders in America and traders in El Salvador, and you have holders in America and holders in El Salvador, and you have people doing international remittances in a few places. There's a lot of valuable things that are happening. But at the same time, it's still a fairly limited number of things. Whereas if you look at what's happened in the Ethereum community, there are people who are into defi and think defi is really important. And then there are people who think defi is just mostly useless speculation. There are people totally into NFTs and there are people who are totally not interested in NFTs.

VB: There's the DAO community, there's the public-goods-funding community. There's the gaming community and all of these things are different parts of Ethereum. Having those different parts is something that makes for a more interesting community. It's definitely something that is different between Ethereum and a lot of the other crypto communities.

VB: Now whether or not that was intentional – I think the thing that was intentional from the beginning was this idea that there's a lot of valuable things that can be done with blockchain, but we don't necessarily know what is going to be done and we need to come up with some ideas.

VB: Ultimately flushing out the details of each one of those visions is something that’s best left to a lot of other people. I can create a canvas but actually figuring out each individual thing people are going to draw on it, that's not something that a small group of people can do. That is something where you really want to find ways to engage the creativity of the entire community. And I do think that we have been pretty successful at that.

A different kind of bunny. Sorry, VItalik.

ML: I think there was a vulnerability that you brought to this because you were only 19 when you formulated this idea for Ethereum. You hadn't been out in the world very much. And at such a young age I think that vulnerability got translated into an acknowledgement that things need to change and things need to be able to shift. And I think you brought that into the DNA of Ethereum and made it stronger. Have you ever thought about it like that?

VB: Hmm, let's see. I definitely have recognized for a long time that every blockchain community is very heavily dependent on what happens at the beginning. And if it goes in one direction at the beginning it's really hard to course correct. Or push it to change in some direction afterwards. And Ethereum at the beginning was basically the result of the people who were there at the time. A lot of that did come as a result of my own ideas, both the ideas that I wrote in places like the white paper, but also I'm sure from of a lot of the unspoken things about how people could think of blockchains and what should a community even look like?

VB: The ideas that I had weren't just created in my head from scratch. It was things that a lot of people at the time were talking about. In 2013 the Bitcoin community, as I think I've mentioned before, there was this community where there were all kinds of people who were in the same place. There were libertarians and there were socialists who were arguing with each other on the politics and society forum.

VB: There were people who believed in the store of value. There were people who believed in the medium of exchange, and there were people who believed in more complicated applications. So all of those things were there in all of those parts of the community. And Ethereum ended up attracting some of [those people]. And it also ended up attracting some [people who had] particular beliefs about other kinds of things that weren't even explicitly expressed at any point. So that's how it started and that's an influence that I think the community will have for the rest of its life.

“I thought that a lot of it was correct criticism of web3 in its current form. But I think it’s also dangerous to judge the ecosystem by where it is today”

ML: To that point one of the first big decisions you had to make with your co-founders was whether you'd be for-profit or nonprofit. Obviously you went the nonprofit route with the Ethereum Foundation. Can you imagine what it might have been like if you had decided to go for-profit?

VB: I think it would have probably been less interesting. I think it's possible that the management of the team, or the Ethereum Foundation's ability to do things by itself, would've been higher, but I think our ability to attract so much talent from the outside, would've been much less. And I think ultimately it would've been a less successful community.

ML: So your dad, I know he influenced you in several ways, one was that he imparted the Austrian school of economic thought to you. But your father's also very spiritual. Did you pick up any of that spirituality from him? Do you consider yourself spiritual?

VB: I feel like that was actually a pretty recent personality change in my dad. I feel like I'm probably getting more spiritual over time, though. Is that because I'm being influenced by my dad or because myself and my dad are being influenced by the same things? I don't know, could be some of both.

ML: It seems like over the years your plan has been to take some steps backwards from a – I don't know if it's a leadership role – but to let the community grow on its own. Do you agree with that? Obviously there are thousands of developers now and community members all over the world who are involved in all sorts of different projects, not least of which is ETH 2.0. Is it your goal to take steps back slowly so that others can emerge, and from a leadership or a directional perspective, be as decentralized as possible?

“When I myself am going to step away or if that will happen or what that will look like, it still feels a bit unclear.”

VB: I think one of the things I've realized over time is that the more important thing isn’t myself stepping away, the important thing is other people stepping forward. And I think Ethereum is much more decentralized now than it was three years ago. It's true that I'm doing almost no coding and even less research than I was before, but that's only possible because there are people, like all of the different client teams that step up. People like Danny Ryan and Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist and Hsiao-wei Wang have stepped up on the research side. It's only because all of those people showed up and all of those people are there to keep carrying the torch that it's possible for Ethereum to become less dependent on myself. I think Ethereum is much less dependent on myself than it was even three years ago.

VB: And I think the long-term plan basically is to just keep being supportive of new people who are able to step up and keep making Ethereum great. I think it's going to keep happening. When I myself am going to step away or if that will happen or what that will look like, it still feels a bit unclear. Though I think we're already at the stage where it matters less than before what I end up doing.

ML: One of the criticisms back around the DAO hack when Ethereum was in its infancy was that you pushed through this vote to do the hard fork. I've never believed that, but it is a criticism that's leveled at you. As we know 99.9% of the Ethereum community voted for the hard fork. But do you feel like that was a somewhat valid criticism back then and is less so now?

VB: I feel like the DAO fork was actually very popular. I think it was 85% of the community supported it in a vote. There are definitely other aspects of Ethereum that were very centered around myself back then, like the proof of state roadmap, for example. And those are definitely the things that are actually decentralizing much more over the last couple of years. The community already has the muscle to go against either myself or the core developers on really controversial decisions. When it comes to the super technical stuff, like the stuff that requires you to understand really deep ideas about consensus theory and cryptography and security tradeoffs, that stuff is harder to decentralize because the number or people who have any information about what good decisions are is much smaller. But I think even there that's the kind of decentralization that actually is finally happening now.

ML: Did you read the recent critique of web three by Moxie Marlinspike?

VB: I did.

Read More: Moxie’s Web3 Critique and a Step in the Right Direction from Livepeer

ML: Do you have any thoughts on that?

VB: I thought that a lot of it was correct criticism of web3 in its current form. But I think it's also dangerous to judge the ecosystem by where it is today because so much of it is completely dependent on where we expect to be moving in the future. So one example of that is this criticism that everyone is dependent on Infura and their light wallet. That is something that there are technical solutions in progress for. There are technical reasons why our earlier attempts at making light clients have not really panned out. And those technical issues are actually being addressed as part of the proof of stake switch.

VB: So I think it's dangerous to look at the present state of the situation and use that to judge what the ecosystem is. What matters is what the ecosystem could become. But obviously it's on us to actually to actually deliver on all of that. So I think there is definitely fair criticism. It’s even true that there's a lot of people who don't actually like or care that much about decentralization. Not even just users, but even actual developers and applications. But at the same time, there is this core developer community that really cares about improving and that really has kicked into full gear on making all of those improvements happen.

VB: It’s important to give them a chance. You can't judge the limits of the blockchain space by the current level of fees, because we know that the current level of fees are going to be addressed by scalability improvements. We can't judge clients by their centralization today if there is a decentralized approach that's one year away on the horizon.

VB: At the same time, criticisms like his are great and very important in basically pushing us not to be complacent and reminding us that there are still all these things that need to happen.

ML: I agree with that and I thought he didn't really address the rather profound changes that have come about through Ethereum and other smart contract platforms, like capital formation without a bank or a venture capital firm being involved through initial coin offerings or staking and earning interest on, on crypto or –

VB: So one thing I think that is actually interesting is that this might be the time when crypto is finally splitting. There are multiple crypto visions, or what the cool kids call narratives, that are in play right now. The number of these different visions is increasing. So, for example, if you talk to some of the people who call themselves web3 skeptics – web3 is a term that's not just a stand-in for crypto. It's a term that refers to one of these particular visions for crypto. Particularly this vision that we can replace centralized web applications and use blockchains and cryptography to create much more decentralized [uses]. I know of critics of web3 who are also very pro-cryptocurrency as a means of exchange and a store of value.

VB: There are plenty of people who are optimistic about one thing and pessimistic about other things. So in some ways, I'm happy that that nuance exists. Someone who was just critical of everything in crypto, they generally have a more knee-jerk reaction than anything else. And everyone who's a booster of everything happening in crypto is also just probably cheering for their team more than they're doing serious thinking. It's at least good that these different visions are being dissected separately more and more.

ML: Yeah, absolutely. I've got two sons, a nine-year-old and a 13-year-old, and they know a bit about you through me telling them about you. I told them that I was going to talk to you and I asked them if you could ask Vitalik a question, what would it be? So this is from my nine-year-old, Nate. He said, “is time a reality or just a concept?”

VB: <Laugh> That's interesting.

ML: That’s a nine-year-old for you, right?

VB: How would I even respond to this? I mean, to some extent, everything that's in reality is also an illusion, or a concept, but the fact that it is a concept doesn't make it less real. That's the way that I relate to a lot of these metaphysical questions. It's the way that I relate to free will. It's the way that I relate to ‘do things actually exist out there?’ On the one hand you can get into this frame of mind where actually these things are not actually the world, these are just ways we understand the world and actually the world is just this kind of mathematical equation that's like floating somewhere and what that somewhere is is beyond our comprehension. But on the other hand, at the at the end of the day if you don't get to the bus stop before eight o'clock you're going to be late for school.

VB: Regardless of these deep philosophical perspectives we have on all of these things, none of them change the fact that it is real. Because it is something that we have to act like it's real in order to be able to in interact with the world. So, it's a concept and it's real and I don't think there's an actual tradeoff between the two.

Nate, you have some reading to do

ML: Okay. So now from my 13-year-old, Noah. Bear in mind, he's 13. So first of all he said, <laugh>, he's 13. “Why do you smell like cheese curds? And why are your feet so big?” So those were just joke questions, of course. That's the 13-year-old mind. I'm not going to ask you those. His serious question though, was, “what's it like being rich? Do you perceive yourself differently from when you didn't have money and did money and fame change your perception of yourself and your reality?”

VB: Hmm. I think one of the differences between the popular perception of being rich and the reality of being rich is that the popular perception of being rich is that you get a lot of benefits because of the things that you have. Like, oh, you know, you have a big house and you have a private jet and you have all of these fancy toys and you have the ability to get 15 servants and have them do whatever you want. But I think the reality is that the bigger benefit of being rich is more what you don't have to worry about. Like not having to worry about whether or not you'll have enough money, not having to worry about a job, not having to worry about if you get into an accident in the United States when you don't have health insurance. This big, long list of things that have to be on your mind if you don't have money. The more money you do have the more those kinds of things actually end up kind of falling away.

VB: So I think the value of having more money in our world today is it's a lot more subtractive. It's more about what kinds of things do you not have to worry about than it is about getting really big benefits from being able to have things that other people don’t. Once you realize that, in some ways it gives you a more optimistic perspective on of the world and on what's going to be possible. Because basically it means that we can try to work toward a world where a lot of those things aren't problems for people even if they don't have the same large amount of resources that it takes to remove those problems. That seems like a world that is more achievable than literally giving a private jet to every single person on the planet.

ML: To switch gears a little bit, can you give an update on ETH 2.0 and where things are going. Do you have any new timing expectations for the merge?

VB: Yeah. I mean, I think late spring this year is still the expectation. Basically what has happened since the merge workshop in October is that there have been more test networks. There have been people working on flushing out all of the little fine details of what it would actually have to look like to switch to proof of stake. What are all of the different changes that clients would have to make, including all the changes that we weren't even thinking about? We had Kintsugi, the public test net where you can go and connect to it and there’s a faucet and you can get 50 Kintsugi ETH and you can launch a Kintsugi smart contract. So a lot of work has been done there. I think what's left at this point is basically just a lot of refining and security auditing and testing. So I think things are going well.

ML: Do you consider yourself happy?

VB: I'd say so.

ML: You alluded to this earlier, but do you think Ethereum is going to be your whole life or is there something else you see yourself doing down the road? Is there another interest you have that you haven't been able to pursue yet that you'd like to get to?

VB: Good question. I don't know. But I do feel like I will be doing things other than Ethereum. In a lot of ways I already am doing things other than Ethereum. Will I ever actually abandon Ethereum? I mean, I think probably not. But yeah, I don't know. I think lots of things can happen in the future and there's a lot of things that – I mean, I have to keep an open mind because now the world is changing quickly and who knows what makes sense to do given what the world's going to look like five years from now?

ML: This has been amazing. Thank you for your time. I like to ask people at the end of these interviews if there's somebody in the crypto space that you admire who you could recommend for me to do an interview like this with.

VB: Hmm. Let's see. I think people in the core research side, like some of the other personalities – people know their names but they're not really understood as people. So Danny [Ryan], Justin [Drake], Dankrad [Feist]. And obviously Zooko [Wilcox, founder of Zcash], one of the other crypto project founders that I respect quite a bit.

ML: That’s great, thank you again.