V神 at 30: From Creator to Guide - The Next Generation of Cryptocurrency Leadership

This Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy article titled “The end of my childhood” on his 30th birthday, sparking deep reflection across the crypto world. The words are filled with a profound self-examination of a technical genius regarding his evolving role and expectations for the next generation of builders. “I am now playing a different role, and it’s time for the next generation to take over what once belonged to me”—this sentence precisely summarizes V神’s current mindset.

Rising Young Leaders: The Moment for V神 to Pass the Torch Has Arrived

Over the past two years, one of V神’s most vivid memories comes from a hackathon experience. At the Zuzalu gathering in Montenegro, he saw developers ten years younger than himself taking leadership roles across various projects—cryptographic audits, Ethereum Layer 2 scaling, synthetic biology, and more.

What impressed V神 most was Nicole Sun, age 21, becoming a key member of the core Zuzalu organizing team. When invited to visit a hacker house in Korea, it was the first time V神 entered a room and found himself the oldest person present. This seemingly trivial detail profoundly changed his perception of his own role.

The voices praising V神 as a “young prodigy changing the world” now sound different. Seeing these young developers go further than he did, with equally outstanding abilities, V神 clearly realizes—if that was once his role, it is no longer. A new generation is rising, and he must prepare for this transition.

From Personal Technical Ideals to Global Community Responsibility

Behind this role shift lies a deeper identity crisis and awakening of responsibility.

Originally, V神 defined himself as a mathematician, coder, and economist. In high school, he participated heavily in math competitions. Soon after entering the crypto space, he began extensive coding work on Bitcoin and Ethereum. At that time, he saw economics as a mathematical tool to understand society and improve the world. “All components fit together neatly,” he once described that period.

But as he aged, these fragments started to scatter. V神 discovered that his years-long efforts to invent “mathematically provable optimal governance mechanisms” hit fundamental impossibilities. More importantly, the key variables determining whether systems succeed in reality—the level of coordination among participants and other factors reduced to “culture”—were not captured in his mathematical models.

This realization changed everything. Now, his writing and thinking still support past ideals, but with entirely different reasoning. The emergence of artificial intelligence further enriched his perspective—this technology can help us understand the hidden variables behind human interactions in new dimensions.

In February 2022, a series of events following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war deeply awakened V神’s sense of personal responsibility. He anxiously refreshed Twitter updates from his Denver hotel room, repeatedly contacting his father in Ukraine. The day after the war broke out, the Ukrainian government’s official Twitter account began requesting crypto donations. Out of instinct for safety, V神 initially warned people to be cautious, only supporting after verifying the addresses. A family member then reminded him that considering what he had already done, for safety, he should probably avoid returning to Russia.

Shortly after, in August 2022, the entire crypto world experienced another storm—the public collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. A long list circulated on Twitter, tallying how many former “crypto protagonists” had fallen. The casualty rate was shocking. At that moment, V神 suddenly understood a brutal truth: most of the guiding lights of the crypto world he once looked up to, the people he could follow since 2014, are no longer there.

New Stories in Cryptocurrency: Beyond Finance

Despite being hailed as a “child prodigy” in his youth, V神 candidly admits that he is not inherently a high-energy person. He values virtues like punctuality, completing tasks, and maintaining high grades—traits of a good student. His decision to drop out was not a brave leap of faith but a natural extension of a series of internships, ultimately confirming his decision to leave university permanently when he gave his Ethereum speech at BTC Miami in January 2014.

Most of his decisions in Ethereum were responses to external pressures. When in 2017 someone suggested he meet with Putin, he almost immediately agreed. Five years later, he realized that this meeting involved colluding in the legalization of a dictatorship. Coupled with lessons from FTX, V神 realized: doing nothing or simply becoming part of someone else’s plan is not automatically a safe or blameless course of action.

Initially, the story of crypto revolved around finance: abolishing banks, replacing fiat currency, weakening central banks. But V神 noticed that over the past fifteen years, the entire public discourse has largely moved beyond concerns about money and banking. Now, discussions focus on artificial intelligence, climate, social justice—finance is almost no longer the main focus.

In response, V神 presents two parallel visions:

The first is a return to the original purpose. Reminding people that money and finance are still important, and serving the underserved in this niche. In places like Argentina, Turkey, and Kenya, high inflation and limited access to financial systems remain daily challenges. Cryptocurrency adoption there exceeds expectations, with local builders actively solving real problems.

The second, grander vision is to go beyond finance—building a decentralized tech stack. Instead of just focusing on money or becoming the “value internet,” create a complete, independent decentralized technology ecosystem that competes with centralized tech giants at all levels. This includes not only financial applications but also democratic governance tools, privacy mechanisms, content platforms, and more.

In this new framework, zero-knowledge proofs become a key technology. They help transcend the false binary of “anonymous=untrusted” and “verified=trusted,” allowing for fine-grained assertions about identity and permissions. This can prevent both external surveillance and internal abuse. For this reason, cryptocurrency is no longer just a financial story; it can become part of a broader story of creating better technology.

Different Regions, Different Landscapes: Global Builders in Practice

In recent years, V神 has traveled around the world, witnessing the diverse development of the crypto space as a digital nomad.

His first visit to China in 2014 revealed rapidly expanding exchanges, large-scale mining pools, and projects with millions of users. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley and Europe showed different paths. Ethereum’s actual headquarters are in Berlin, where open-source culture fostered early ideas beyond finance. Silicon Valley blended crypto with rationalism, effective altruism, transhumanism, forming a unique crypto culture.

After regulatory crackdowns in China, Singapore became a new home for many developers. Within Silicon Valley, a split emerged—rationalists and AI developers became opposing factions after 2020. Ethereum itself also underwent regional shifts after introducing the proof-of-stake research team in 2018.

Taiwan left the deepest impression on V神—not only because of its strong self-organization but also due to its openness to new ideas. Whenever he publishes an article, within days, independent learning groups form, annotating on Google Docs. The Taiwanese digital affairs department also enthusiastically promotes Glen Weyl’s democratic ideas, quickly releasing comprehensive mind maps on social media. Paul Graham once summarized what each city conveys: New York says “Make more money,” Boston says “Read more books,” Silicon Valley says “Become more powerful.” When visiting Taipei, V神’s message was: “You should rediscover the high schooler inside you.”

Argentina exemplifies another spirit of practice. There, a strong desire to build and apply Ethereum technology exists amid hyperinflation and financial exclusion, making crypto a practical solution. V神 is recognized on the streets of Buenos Aires more often than in San Francisco. Local builders demonstrate a remarkable balance of pragmatism and idealism, dedicated to solving real daily challenges.

These places witnessed the birth of Zuzalu—a mobile, autonomous community created in Montenegro in spring 2023, which has begun to evolve on its own. The most important insight from Zuzalu is: culture and community are not only things to defend but also things to actively create and develop. This is the core reason the network state movement attracted V神.

The Quadrilateral of Stakeholders: Micro-Politics of the Crypto Ecosystem

V神 proposes an analytical framework: the crypto space consists of four interconnected groups.

Token holders and DeFi users support the ecosystem’s funding, driving consensus algorithms and zero-knowledge proof technologies to achieve quality outputs. Intellectuals provide ideas, ensuring the space does meaningful work. Developers bridge the gap between theory and practice, creating real applications. Practical users are the ultimate beneficiaries.

Each group has complex motivations and often mocks each other. Some blockchain projects try to shed “naive utopian idealism” and focus on applications and usability. Some developers look down on token holders’ “dirty love” for making money. Others criticize pragmatic users for choosing cheaper centralized solutions.

But V神 believes that enhancing mutual understanding among these four groups is a feasible path to peace. Each side should understand that they ultimately depend on the other three, restrain excessive behaviors, and realize that their shared dreams are not as distant as imagined. This applies not only within the crypto space but also in interactions with like-minded communities.

Reflections at Thirty: Growth, Responsibility, and Continuous Innovation

On this milestone birthday, V神 reflects on his life lessons:

First, greed is not the only form of selfishness. Cowardice, laziness, and resentment can also cause harm, and even greed for social status can be as damaging as greed for money. Growing up in gentle Canada, he believed that avoiding greed for money and power was enough to fulfill the responsibility of being a good person. But reality is far more complex.

Second, preferences can be valid without scientific explanation. Excessive utilitarianism leads people to invent reasons for everything they like, often causing unnecessary conflicts. The lesson is that someone might not be suitable for you, but that doesn’t make them a bad person in an absolute sense.

Finally, the power of habits should not be underestimated. As a digital nomad frequently jumping continents, V神 tries to limit daily goals. He aims to run 20 km each month and do his best otherwise. Because effective habits are those you actually maintain. Gamification in Duolingo works well for him—making positive decisions is hard, so it’s better to make decisions that have long-term impacts on thinking, reprogramming default modes.

As the world changes faster, lessons learned from others become outdated more quickly. Therefore, simply doing things slowly and gaining personal experience cannot be replaced.

Cycles of Death, Birth, and Rebirth

Every good thing in society—communities, ideologies, scenes, nations, even companies, families, and relationships—is created by people. These things are finite: as part of the world and as your experience of it. As communities and places disappear, new ones must be created to replace them.

In 2023, V神 watched many large and small things gradually fade away. The world is changing rapidly, and his framework for understanding it is evolving, as is his role within it. There is genuine inevitable death, even if eternal life exists, it will continue. But there is also birth and rebirth.

Staying active and striving to create new things is everyone’s task. This is the ultimate realization V神 reaches on his 30th birthday. Once a talented technologist, he has grown into a thinker, community builder, and observer of the world. He is no longer the young genius needing praise, but a conscious bearer of responsibility, paving the way for the next generation.

The crypto world is experiencing its own death and rebirth, and V神’s role transition is a subtle but profound part of this larger cycle.