How the “Vitalik as Wunderkind” Narrative May Blind Us

When I first heard about Ethereum 18 or 20 months ago, I was immediately stricken. It’s a powerful story and stories sell.

A key part of the overall Ethereum story is how its origin is so deeply wrapped up with the personal story of Vitalik Buterin.

The college drop-out. The computer programming genius. Etc.

The fact that he’s on the spectrum adds to it, kind of like “eccentric genius,” and feeds our need to believe that salvation comes from someone who really looks at the world differently.

In the post-Steve Jobs era, particularly among those disillusioned with Zuck and who think that last generation’s heroes of Brin/Page/Bezos, et al. have “gone corporate,” we needed a hero.

So, the “Vitalik as second coming of Jesus [or Jobs]” fits nicely into that.

And when it stands in contrast to the “Who is Satoshi anyway?” story, it’s particularly stark. Here was a leader we could touch and see. Someone we can all believe in.

At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if we get too excited about this part of the narrative. I have wondered for a while if some components of Ethereum get a pass because the assumption is “Vitalik will fix that.”

For example:

• “Ethereum doesn’t scale.” — “Vitalik will fix that.”
• “The DAO was hacked…we’ll lose all our money.”— Vitalik will fix that.
• “Proof of Work is too energy intensive and leads to centralization,”….Vitalik will fix that.

Which brings me to an excellent article I read by Tuur Demeester (one of the 75 ppl I follow on Twitter) called “Critique of Buterin’s ‘A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy

From the conclusion of Tuur’s post:

While it is commendable that Buterin works to build his cryptocurrency design proposals from first principles, I believe his write up contains several flaws. He is confused about cost-defense trade-offs and makes unsubstantiated claims about work- versus stake-based security. He fails to provide convincing logical or historical proof of the efficacy of social consensus. And he claims proof-of-stake is more resilient without providing proof or arguments, and without acknowledging the numerous objections that have been raised by people of substantial pedigree. Buterin’s article does not convince me that proof-of-stake has a sound philosophical foundation, nor that it’s a viable stand-alone mechanism for securing public blockchains.

Not surprisingly, it led to a response by Vitalik and a subsequent rebuttal by Tuur.

Now, I don’t have enough technical knowledge to be able to assess whether Tuur or Vitalik is right here and what will ultimately be proven.

However, I do think it raises a lot of questions that should inform how developers and entrepreneurs build their technologies. (To be fair, I hear the term ‘blockchain-agnostic a lot’ from people doing ICOs using ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, which is good. They are future proofing themselves. That is smart.).

It should also inform how you invest (if you choose to do so) in crypto. Going “all in” on Ethereum may be risky.

Anyone who has been in tech for a while knows how difficult it is fully secure a system. For something that is “Turing-complete,” (as Ethereum is) and aims to be a “world computer,” the attack surface (possible areas of vulnerability) is huge.

It’s like trying to completely close the borders of a large country with a wall and make sure that no one gets in. Really, really difficult to do. (Oh wait, did I just do that? Ugh, sorry).

Some, like John Light, would say (paraphrasing)….”dude, you’re missing the point. Blockchains are about trust. Before you do full-on computing stuff, you need a ‘trust layer’ upon which you can build. You know what the best layer for trust is out there? It’s not Ethereum. It’s Bitcoin.”

The mere existence of these deep questions from Tuur should give us all reason to pause.

For example, after Bancor raised $153 million, Emin Gün Sirer put out a post called ‘Bancor is Flawed‘ which had a strong response from Bancor’s Eyal Hertzog. From a marketing perspective, I wrote that Bancor did a great job in its response.

From a technical perspective, however, many people rightfully said “the mere fact that there were SO many points in Emin’s post should make you wonder about Bancor’s viability.”

I thought that was fair. Stories sell, but stories can also inspire you to make really bad choices. Such is life.

[As an aside, I have chatted with the leads of 2 projects recently (KickCity being one of them-disclosure: advisor) who are building on Bancor, so the market is in the process of deciding.]
But, back to Vitalik, Tuur, and the stories we tell ourselves. Plus, as always, there’s a marketing lesson here.

When we make investments of time, money, or work, it our right to combine multiple elements to determine which option we prefer. Belief and faith are, and can be, a part of the decision.

You can believe that, indeed, Vitalik is a wunderkind who can and will fix everything. But, at the same time, I think it’s important to admit that you believe that, particularly if you are putting your business or money at stake (pun intended).

We all have to admit that there is a story here and recognize the role that it may be playing in our decision criteria. We may like the story and that’s fine, but we just have to say “yep, I like the Vitalik as Jesus/Jobs/Luke Skywalker narrative and I believe it will end up that way.”

Sometimes it does.

The marketing lesson for each of us?

The story matters a lot. Become a better storyteller (extra credit if you learn how to do it visually as well). If you tell a good story, you can inspire belief which gives you time to deliver on the actual promise.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Ethereum is a tremendous innovation and represents a previously unimagined paradigm. I’m also not saying “it can’t or won’t work.” All I am suggesting is that our critical lens may be skewed a bit because we love the Vitalik backstory and, like anything that requires objectivity, we have to work to remove our biases and filters.