The Prince of Crypto

I’ve recently been getting more and more into the crypto scene, specifically in Berlin. Not memecoin vampires, but instead the zk scene, which has completely different intentions and is focused on genuine privacy innovation.

At the W3PN HACKS hackathon I was at last weekend, Vitalik Buterin gave the intro talk, speaking about various technical things planned for Ethereum.

Before this, I was rather naively critical of Vitalik, i.e. not having delved more deeply into the power structures in Ethereum yet, but disliking him simply because there seems to be so much centralization regarding “who do we listen to?”. ‘Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to yearn for decentralization, yet centralize so much authority in a single person?’, I thought.

At Protocol Berg, an associated web3 tech conference in Berlin before the hackathon, there was also a whiteboard where people were to write their most controversial opinions on. I simply wrote “post-Vitalik crypto” in one corner for fun and when I came back the next day, someone else had drawn a stickman laying on the ground with a knife in its chest and the text “GOD IS DEAD” below it. ‘Damn’, I thought. Seemed pretty post-ironic.

Later I talked to someone about this and asked them “Is Vitalik really seen as the god of crypto?”. But that person responded to me that he’s rather seen as the prince.

Since then, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this.

Of course every community has its memes and mascots, but initially I thought that in the crypto scene, especially the one with a big focus on Ethereum, this must also be certain values, i.e. elements of a certain code of conduct regarding “this is how we want to interact with each other”.

But at least there, that wasn’t the case. Vitalik presents as cute, modest and approachable. Everyone calls him by his first name. He is a billionaire, and can still walk around in Berlin by himself without any issues. Someone even told me half-jokingly: “When Vitalik ever gets a girlfriend, that might be the end of Ethereum”.

Also, what Vitalik says is the “public opinion” in this scene. For example regarding the zk language Noir, which has been in the making for years, someone told me that it was recently mentioned by Vitalik on X, implying that it can be seen as the de-facto standard. To be fair, many of the things he says are, at least from what I’ve seen, genuinely intelligent and well-intentioned. The people like him, and he likes the people.

I still do think that those using Ethereum should question the power structures associated with it more.

But for now, regarding Vitalik, until I’m proven otherwise, I like him too.