Thoughts on Vitalik: An Ethereum Story

I finally watched the Vitalik Buterin documentary this weekend. It came out a few weeks ago, and a handful of people had reached out to mention that I made a brief appearance—more on that later.

The film explores Vitalik’s journey from his family’s immigration to Canada to the creation of Ethereum and beyond, all from his perspective. Key figures in his life, such as his parents and members of the Ethereum Foundation, are also interviewed.

As someone deeply involved in the industry, I didn’t find it particularly exciting. The film leaves me wondering: is this supposed to be about Ethereum or Vitalik himself? If it’s the latter, it misses the mark.

While there are glimpses of Vitalik’s life and aspects of his personality, the film mostly focuses on Ethereum’s evolution as a project. It touches on its origins and the early internal conflicts between co-founders. It brushes through the NFT boom, barely mentioning Defi and other use cases. It fast-forwards to Ethereum’s so-called “energy problem,” culminating in The Merge—the pace maintained through interviews with Justin Drake and Danny Ryan, among others.

Those who have read The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo or The Cryptopians by Laura Shin will get little out of this film. At best, it might land on Netflix, where normies will learn about Ethereum and meet its founder, perhaps seeing him as some odd genius.

A few takeaways from the film:

• I wish the focus had been more on Vitalik as a person rather than Ethereum’s history. Russo and Shin spent years researching Ethereum, and no one-hour documentary can match the depth of their work. Diving deeper into Vitalik’s personal life, childhood, personality, relationships, and vision would have been more interesting. Personally, I’m interested in why he wants to make Ethereum so hard.
• Vitalik is truly one of a kind. I’ve had the chance to interact with him a dozen times through podcasts, events, and dinners–even sharing a dorm room with him at the Ethereum Berlin office in 2015. Our first conversation on Epicenter was in December 2014, just days before his 20th birthday. I immediately recognized he was one of the most brilliant minds I’d ever met. We got off the call, and I said to Brian, “What were you doing at 19?”
• Ethereum’s roots are deeply cypherpunk. Before ICOs, NFTs, and rollups, Ethereum was about building a decentralized, trust-minimized world computer—run by its users without intermediaries. I think the industry has lost touch with that.
• The crypto industry has transformed dramatically, and I worry it may become a worse version of the internet. Tim O’Reilly appears in the documentary, noting that technologies rarely evolve as their creators intended. Crypto risks straying too far from its original vision, just as the internet has been co-opted by actors with incentives that are unaligned with its users.
• Despite everything, I’m proud to be part of this industry. It’s been over ten years since I first learned about Bitcoin and co-founded Epicenter with Brian. I’m grateful for the journey, the people I’ve met, and the chance to contribute to educating others. I feel privileged to have had access to visionaries like Vitalik.

As for my appearance in the film, in 2022, I was at Full Node in Berlin, livestreaming with around 100 others as we waited for The Merge. I spoke to several people while we awaited block 15537393, and some of that footage made it into the movie. I wonder how many friends and family will spot me if this film hits Netflix.