Vitalik Buterin Has Donated $5 Million to Ukraine

April 7, 2022 The Crypto Briefing

Vitalik Buterin quietly donates $5M ETH to aid Ukraine as total tracked crypto donations reach $133M

April 7, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Vitalik Buterin quietly donates M ETH to aid Ukraine as total tracked crypto donations reach 3M

No official public announcement was made regarding the large sum donation.

As told by Aid for Ukraine, a joint initiative created by the Ukrainian government, FTX, Everstake and Kuna to rally crypto donations for the country, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin made $5 million worth of ETH donations to Ukraine in early April. According to the entity, despite the large donation sum, Buterin did not make an announcement regarding the transaction. It was eventually linked to him via the Ethereum Name Service domain name "vitalik.eth," which served as the origin of the transfer.

.@VitalikButerin donated almost $2.5M in $ETH to @_AidForUkraine 2 days ago, and didn't say a word! He's also donated $2.5M to @Unchainfund.

Thanks for your enormous help, Vitalik, and thank you for creating @ethereum! The #Ethereum community is pic.twitter.com/HuvDcTM40e
— Aid For Ukraine (@_AidForUkraine) April 6, 2022

Half of the $5 million in donations went directly to Aid for Ukraine, while the other half went to Unchain Fund, a cryptocurrency charity initiative created by activists in the blockchain community to provide humanitarian relief for Ukrainians. Alex Bornyakov, deputy minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, publicly thanked Buterin's contribution in a tweet, writing:

"I couldn't be more grateful for every crypto donation to our lifesaving initiative, Aid for Ukraine. It really helps to strengthen our country and protect its democratic values. Special thanks to Vitalik Buterin for standing with Ukraine."

Based on data gathered by Cointelegraph, the amount of tracked crypto donations sent to the Ukrainian government, military and charities has surpassed $133 million. Unchain Fund has raised more than $10 million alone, with most of its contributions stemming from NEAR tokens and ETH. But overall, it appears the pace of donations has slowed down.

From Feb. 28 to March 9 alone, total tracked crypto donations to Ukraine skyrocketed from $37 million to $108 million . Some have pointed to a decline in enthusiasm for such initiatives, especially after the Ukrainian government made a U-turn on an anticipated airdrop .

Vitalik Buterin is worried about Ethereum, here’s how the community responds

April 4, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

As Vitalik Buterin expressed worries about profit-focused players on Ethereum, the community responded with varying perspectives.

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum (ETH), recently expressed his concerns about Ethereum’s future. However, attendees of the recent ETHDubai event voiced mixed sentiments over Buterin’s talk on crypto’s perils.

In an interview, Ethereum’s founder pointed out some of his worries regarding the platform. This includes the platform being populated by players who are only after profit and deviate from the original vision of an egalitarian platform. "If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable,” Buterin said.

The recent ETHDubai event at Le Meridien Dubai.

Commenting on Buterin’s woes, Sergej Kunz, the co-founder of 1inch Network, expressed that he disagrees highly with the Ethereum founder. Kunz said that while there are “scam projects” that try to get money from retail investors, there are also good projects who need really funding and that they can get that funding from venture capitals who are trying to make a profit. Citing 1inch as an example, Kunz explained that:

“We see angels and investors. They helped us. They gave us money to fully concentrate, to work on this startup. [...] We work to improve the space, to create something unique and improve the whole financial system.”

Following this, Aleksei Pupyshev, a developer at GTON Capital, believes that there should be a balance between profit and non-profit initiatives within the space. He thinks that while there are many projects supporting charity and solving health-related issues, rewards can motivate people to come into the industry.

“We need more motivation for people who are exploring, and they are exploring by investing.”

On the other hand, Siva S, the CTO of Ozone, explained that the problem is tied to the growth of the platform. According to Siva, as the crypto ecosystem grows, more traditional finance players who are profit-focused will come in and want "some sort of control." However, he believes that as long as core concepts like consensus stay relevant, developers will still be happy to build on top of Ethereum.

Meanwhile, Raullen Chai, the co-founder of IoTeX, shares the same concerns as Buterin. According to Chai, he’s also worried if the crypto pioneers can stick to their visions for their platforms. He explained:

“I do have the same concern here. I'm not sure if like the crypto OG folks can stick to their vision. I hope they could, and I don't see a fix for this problem, unfortunately.”

Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum also expressed his belief in decentralization in a recent talk at the Binance Blockchain Week event. In his keynote speech, the Cardano founder said that "if you’re just here to make money, you lose all the things that make the technology special.”

Tom Brady tweets he’s ‘a big fan’ of Vitalik Buterin

March 21, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Vitalik Buterin's recent TIME magazine cover garnered a lot of attention on Twitter and ultimately connected the Ethereum co-founder with NFL athlete Tom Brady.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently spoke about his biggest concerns about the crypto industry with TIME Magazine. Following the interview's publication, Buterin responded to tweets that negatively compared his appearance to that of Tom Brady, retired NFL star and founder of the NFT marketplace Autograph.

The quote tweets on the new time article about me are truly amazing.

These are barely even cherry picked, it's pretty much one piece of awesome after another. Highly recommend scrolling. https://t.co/teyd3ROqrT pic.twitter.com/BDzbwvekhw
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 18, 2022

Buterin viewed the critical comments as comical and even posted collages of the "highly recommended" tweets. He admitted he didn't know who Tom Brady is, thinking he was being associated with actor Tom Cruise at first. That's when Brady, who knew exactly who Buterin was, chimed in to express his gratitude and fandom towards the “prince of crypto.”

What’s up Vitalik! You may not know me but just wanted to say I’m a big fan of yours. thank you for everything you’ve built in the world of crypto, otherwise @Autograph wouldn’t have been possible. Hope I get to meet you some day you’re the https://t.co/W6PxS5P78M
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) March 19, 2022

Brady praised Buterin as the G.O.A.T., a term used to describe those who are the "Greatest Of All Time" in their field, and often used in reference to Brady himself for being the only NFL player with seven championships under his belt. Brady acknowledged that Autograph "wouldn't have been possible" without Buterin. Recently, Autograph closed on a $170 million funding round. Company reps stated at the time that it planned to use the funds to scale its NFT technology and expand its user base.

Buterin's cover story is part of TIME's first-ever entire issue released as an NFT on the blockchain. The decentralized magazine edition will be available on March 23. As part of the magazine's push for Web3 initiatives, it began accepting payment for digital subscriptions in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) as well as Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE) and other cryotocurrencies. TIMEPieces, the NFT arm of the company, tweeted on Sunday that it will soon add ApeCoin, the governance and utility token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (APE) to its list of accepted cryptocurrencies.

Buterin referred to BAYC during the interview when discussing the tendency of those within the industry to publicly display wealth associated to crypto and NFTs. “The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” he said.

Despite being unimpressed with public figures like Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon shilling their own Bored Apes or people "just buying yachts and Lambos,” Buterin did admit to "one silver lining." Russian-born Buterin wrote to TIME that all of the recent blockchain-based efforts to aid the Russia-Ukraine crisis have served to remind the crypto community "that ultimately the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the real world.”

Vitalik Buterin talks crypto’s perils in Time Magazine interview

March 18, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The “prince of crypto,” as Vitalik is referred to in the magazine, said the cryptocurrency industry has an image problem.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin graced the front page of Time Magazine this month after he was interviewed by the publication about the potential perils of the industry he helped tocreate.

During the 80-minute interview, Buterin explained the “dystopian potential” of digital assets if implemented incorrectly. Among his biggest worries are overzealous investors, high transaction fees and public displays of wealth by those claiming to have made a fortune trading crypto and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

Although Buterin has high hopes for Ethereum — the network powering the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and countless other projects — he fears that his vision of creating a more egalitarian digital economy risks being overtaken by nefarious actors who are only after greed.

"If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable,” he said.

The co-founder of Ethereum @VitalikButerin was featured in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2021.https://t.co/94sesOpA52
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) September 16, 2021

The interview also delved into other Ethereum-focused pain points for Buterin, such as how much power to exercise in the community during highly contentious periods in its evolution, including the infamous 2016 hack of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO. The interview painted Buterin as a pragmatic leader taking a “middle ground” approach to solving issues that impact the community.

Over the years, Buterin has used his personal blog to advocate for technical solutions related to Ethereum’s development. In December 2021, he published “Endgame,” a thought experiment that explores the evolution of Ethereum 2.0, which is now referred to as the “consensus layer.” In the post, Buterin suggested improvements to network scalability with notable trade-offs — chief among them being the centralization of block production.

The ETH cinematic universe is getting bigger: ETH 2.0 scaling, zk-Rollups, L2s & more. Meanwhile, @VitalikButerin just released his ‘endgame’ plan that solidifies his mission for a deflationary age. https://t.co/CbIo3WZXNH
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) December 7, 2021

While Ethereum’s evolution to a proof-of-stake chain remains mired in delays, the investing community has high hopes for the future. Ethereum’s Beacon Chain now has over 316,000 validators and roughly 10.1. billion ETH staked.