In 2014, a young Russian man came to Hangzhou and, at an exhibition, generously handed out 5,000 virtual coins. At the time, almost everyone doubted him, treating him like a scammer—only a very small number believed him. But do you know what happened? Those 5,000 free coins later surged to $150 million. That’s Ethereum—and the young man was V God, Vitalik Buterin.

When I first learned about V God’s story, I was deeply moved. This isn’t just a story about wealth—it’s also about how a young genius can change the world.

It’s kind of dramatic, really. Between the ages of 13 and 16, V God was a fan of World of Warcraft, especially fond of the Warlock. Then, in one game update, Blizzard removed one of his favorite skills. Just such a small thing, yet it made him realize a profound problem: in centralized systems, players are always at a disadvantage. This insight changed the trajectory of his life. From then on, he started thinking about whether there was a way to break the centralized model. And when he discovered Bitcoin at 17, he found the answer.

The blockchain’s decentralization appealed to V God, but as he studied it more deeply, he found Bitcoin had limitations. Since there was enormous demand in the market, he decided to create Ethereum. At the end of 2013, he published a paper titled “Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform,” which analyzed Bitcoin’s design, strengths, and shortcomings in detail, and explained Ethereum’s potential. The paper caused a sensation as soon as it was released. The Bitcoin community widely praised it, and some people even proactively sought collaboration with V God.

In May 2014, V God first came to China to prepare for Ethereum’s crowdfunding pre-sale. He met industry giants and introduced Ethereum’s concept in detail. But there were also people who, face-to-face, claimed he was a scammer—and even drove him out. Who could have imagined then that this young man, who was being questioned, would later create a project worth hundreds of billions of dollars? That same year, in July, Ethereum officially launched its crowdfunding and successfully raised 31,000 Bitcoins.

A major event happened in 2016. The Ethereum community launched a project called “The DAO” for decentralized investment. But it became a target for hackers, and due to smart contract vulnerabilities, 3.6 million ETH were stolen. The incident severely shook people’s confidence in Ethereum’s security. To compensate the victims, V God and the Ethereum Foundation decided to carry out a hard fork to reverse the stolen funds. But some miners insisted that the code should not be changed, and they continued mining on the original chain. This resulted in two different chains: Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Ethereum (ETH). Interestingly, after the split, ETC also attracted a large number of investors.

When the bull market arrived in 2017, Ethereum’s appeal fully exploded. Major domestic exchanges quickly listed ETH trading pairs—an unprecedented move at the time. This clearly showed the market’s craving for ETH. Because ETH could only be mined using graphics cards, and graphics cards were standard hardware, many people joined the mining ranks. Graphics card prices soared. In some cases, nearly 9.5 graphics cards sold were for mining, with only half used for gaming.

In 2017, ICOs became a crazy fundraising method. Nearly all projects chose to raise funds with ETH, including EOS, Quantum Chain, and others. This created enormous wealth and inflated a massive bubble. A virtual pet project on Ethereum alone could easily push up the ETH price. The frenzy continued until September 4, 2017, when some countries explicitly banned ICOs; only then did the trend gradually die down.

But good times didn’t last. On March 12, 2020, a bear market hit, the U.S. Federal Reserve triggered circuit breakers one after another, and the cryptocurrency market’s total value dropped rapidly. ETH crashed from its bull market high to $87. Many investors panicked and sold off, losing confidence. However, this is precisely when opportunities appeared.

That same year, DeFi exploded. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols exceeded $10 billion, achieving more than 2,000% growth. Tokens representing distribution/dividends, such as YFI, surged by thousands or even tens of thousands of times. Most of these DeFi projects were built on the Ethereum network, further driving Ethereum’s development.

In 2021, amid the crypto market’s bull run, the ETH price soared to $4,850, up 16,000 times from its initial issuance price. It boosted everything related to Ethereum: virtual world land, NFT projects—these became the hot topics of the time.

With V God successfully pushing Ethereum from PoW to PoS and the launch of second-layer networks, new opportunities emerged. People began participating in new projects’ experiments on testnets, earning token rewards once projects went live. Many people created hundreds of new Ethereum addresses, easily taking part in testing and earning millions, even tens of millions of dollars. Most projects chose ETH as the base token.

Ethereum’s new challenge now is competition among L2s. As the mainnet load increases, transactions get slower and fees rise, so more and more people are studying second-layer networks. These L2s allow users to settle internally and then batch-send transaction records to the mainnet. Competitors like ARB, OP, STRK, and LINEA have emerged one after another. In the future, it will be competition among L2s, and the winners will receive broad recognition.

V God’s story and Ethereum’s journey are full of challenges and setbacks, yet they created miracles in the blockchain world. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, you should closely follow Ethereum’s development. It offers everyone the possibility of wealth and opportunity. If you’re also interested in these opportunities, you can follow ETH and related L2 assets on Gate and keep exploring this exciting world.