At just 20-years young, Vitalik Buterin is one of the most brilliant minds in the cryptocurrency space. Previously, a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, he has conceptualized Ethereum, the most radical and ambitious cryptocurrency project since Bitcoin. After raising $18m in a crowdsale, a team of over 30 are working on launching the project by March 2015. In his work on designing a system for the future, he has been grappling with many of the hardest problems in the cryptocurrency space over the past year.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Ethereum has evolved since the white paper

The problems of Proof-of-Work

Why Proof-of-Stake is the future of consensus protocols

Why his main focus has been on consensus issues and scalability

Why Bitcoin will never be stable enough to price things in

The flawed ideology of ‘Bitcoin maximalism’ that prevents people from considering Proof-of-Work alternatives

Episode links:

Ethereum

How to get started: Your first DApp in under one hour

Ethereum Proof-of-Concept 7

Proof of Stake: How I Learned to Love Weak Subjectivity

Slasher: A Punitive Proof-of-Stake Algorithm

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/058