Is Ethereum too tied to Vitalik Buterin?

[Abiky]

Ever since Ethereum came into inception, Vitalik Buterin has been leading the way for the project's success. While I have nothing against this, sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of crypto in its entirety. There's a reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place without revealing his/her identity to the public. The fact that everybody knows who created Ethereum, could greatly put the project at risk in the future. For instance, if Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, the price per Ethereum could plummet on the market. Everything Vitalik says has an impact (either directly or indirectly) on the project itself. With Bitcoin, that's not the case since no one knows who Satoshi was. His/her contribution led Bitcoin to take its own steps after he/she left the project. If Ethereum wants to become a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, the project needs to distance itself from the founder.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Ethereum is too tied to Vitalik Buterin? If not, please explain why. Your input will be greatly appreciated.

[bigcash2011]

Ever since Ethereum came into inception, Vitalik Buterin has been leading the way for the project's success. While I have nothing against this, sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of crypto in its entirety. There's a reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place without revealing his/her identity to the public. The fact that everybody knows who created Ethereum, could greatly put the project at risk in the future. For instance, if Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, the price per Ethereum could plummet on the market. Everything Vitalik says has an impact (either directly or indirectly) on the project itself. With Bitcoin, that's not the case since no one knows who Satoshi was. His/her contribution led Bitcoin to take its own steps after he/she left the project. If Ethereum wants to become a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, the project needs to distance itself from the founder.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Ethereum is too tied to Vitalik Buterin? If not, please explain why. Your input will be greatly appreciated.

I think ethereum is the only blockchain network other than bitcoin that has developers working both independently and under a funded contract all around the world from various locations so i do not think that a project of such a scale can depend on a single person, no, never. Even when similar question was asked to Vitalik he clearly said that even i leave Eth tomorrow the project will continue. This just proves the solid decentralized roots of Ethereum as a project and that is the reason why market trusts ethereum the most as an alt.

[cryptogeek101]

Ever since Ethereum came into inception, Vitalik Buterin has been leading the way for the project's success. While I have nothing against this, sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of crypto in its entirety. There's a reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place without revealing his/her identity to the public. The fact that everybody knows who created Ethereum, could greatly put the project at risk in the future. For instance, if Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, the price per Ethereum could plummet on the market. Everything Vitalik says has an impact (either directly or indirectly) on the project itself. With Bitcoin, that's not the case since no one knows who Satoshi was. His/her contribution led Bitcoin to take its own steps after he/she left the project. If Ethereum wants to become a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, the project needs to distance itself from the founder.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Ethereum is too tied to Vitalik Buterin? If not, please explain why. Your input will be greatly appreciated.

 I think Vitalik Buterin despite being a co-founder of Ethereum blockchain, might not have much negative influence on the blockchain, I believe there are some other developers involved in the project which i think can handle the project in the event of the death of Vitalik. The Ethereum blockchain is purely a decentralized blockchain with smart contract applications and developers are ready to continue with the project to achieve its future positive goals

[tsaroz]

Ever since Ethereum came into inception, Vitalik Buterin has been leading the way for the project's success. While I have nothing against this, sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of crypto in its entirety. There's a reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place without revealing his/her identity to the public. The fact that everybody knows who created Ethereum, could greatly put the project at risk in the future. For instance, if Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, the price per Ethereum could plummet on the market. Everything Vitalik says has an impact (either directly or indirectly) on the project itself. With Bitcoin, that's not the case since no one knows who Satoshi was. His/her contribution led Bitcoin to take its own steps after he/she left the project. If Ethereum wants to become a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, the project needs to distance itself from the founder.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Ethereum is too tied to Vitalik Buterin? If not, please explain why. Your input will be greatly appreciated.

 I think Vitalik Buterin despite being a co-founder of Ethereum blockchain, might not have much negative influence on the blockchain, I believe there are some other developers involved in the project which i think can handle the project in the event of the death of Vitalik. The Ethereum blockchain is purely a decentralized blockchain with smart contract applications and developers are ready to continue with the project to achieve its future positive goals

Unlike many other blockchain that has a close team and a showy founding member, Ethereum is a much more diverse project with a diverse community directly involved in it's development. Go to the official org site of Ethereum and they bring Vitalik just among some early contributors. He's not like so much of a limelight as Justin Tron and has a lesser involvement in decision making about the blockchain.

[Herbert2020]

of course it is because there is nobody else to make any decisions and there is not much of a network to analyze those decisions as a proposal and decide whether they  wanted to accept them or not. that is what happens when the projects become centralized, only one person or one team makes all the decisions just like banking system!

[coinsycrip09]

maybe because Vitalik Buterin is the main designer of Ethereum and also one of the developers who succeeded in making ethereum as the second favorite altcoin after bitcoin, that's why the name Vitalik Buterin is always associated with ethereum.

but i think, if one day Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, i think ethereum will continue.

[Pomogator]

I agree with this statement. Tesla has the same stock situation. If Elon does something bad, then Tesla stocks fly down the mountain. It will be really interesting to see what happens to the top 2 coin after the “Face” incident of the coin.

[kingzpro]

Ever since Ethereum came into inception, Vitalik Buterin has been leading the way for the project's success. While I have nothing against this, sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of crypto in its entirety. There's a reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place without revealing his/her identity to the public. The fact that everybody knows who created Ethereum, could greatly put the project at risk in the future. For instance, if Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, the price per Ethereum could plummet on the market. Everything Vitalik says has an impact (either directly or indirectly) on the project itself. With Bitcoin, that's not the case since no one knows who Satoshi was. His/her contribution led Bitcoin to take its own steps after he/she left the project. If Ethereum wants to become a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, the project needs to distance itself from the founder.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Ethereum is too tied to Vitalik Buterin? If not, please explain why. Your input will be greatly appreciated.

Obviously as the founder of ethereum network he definitely has an influence on the overall project and even his interviews and tweets sometimes put clear effect on the market but still i think that ethereum is much more decentralized than most of other networks that are run like a private company or corporate enterprise and after implementation of eth 2.0 i think network will be moving towards more decentralization which would be great for ethereum over longterm.

[jacafbiz]

Negative influence No, or let me say not for now. People do not understand that Vitalik is the center holding all the pieces together, I will only have concern if he decided to be taking authoritative decision which could hidden the success of the chain. People also need to remember that Ethereum is still a POW project, it seems people have forgotten this but the main discussion is about the POS governance to be implemented in Eth 2.0

[FanEagle]

This is probably the only thing about ethereum that I am not really comfortable about. Is Vitalik an important figure in ethereum world? Of course he is, he works on making ethereum a lot better and he talks about ethereum and basically leads a team of developers for ethereum. However is he the owner of it like ICO project heads? He is not, he doesn't have ethereum in unfair advantage.

Let me explain you this way, if someone does ICO for their project, they have ALL the tokens they created and sell it to you, now that is not decentralized right? That sounds centralized and basically controlled by one person. Now, Vitalik is not like that at all, dude just runs a developer team. However he is not unrelated neither right? He is still a quite influential. So, I can't decide if he is too involved or not.

[Krislaw]

Know that Ethereum is where it is today because of Vitalik and the developers working under the projects. Same as other project CEOs.
I always think of it that if other projects decided to keep their identity anonymous like the founder of Bitcoin, there might have been a war between the government and crypto world. There's still decentralization presently to me. It's still better as it is now. Use case is what I think is very important in a project.

[dentolas]

As someone already said, Ethereum has very solid decentralized roots, so it is not depending solely of Vitalik existance, but I do agree that the market seems to look at Ethereum strenght as being directly linked to Vitalik geniality. On a small market like crypto this kind of thing can have an impact if something happens to him, but it would be temporary

[hatshepsut93]

Ethereum can do without Vitalik, there's plenty of good developers who work on the protocol, but right now Vitalik has a lot of say when it comes to important decisions, he decides when Ethereum forks, the development course, he decides when to revert old blocks to undo hacks.  I think Ethereum would be better if Vitalik played a much smaller role and the key decisions were made by community and developers together like it's done in Bitcoin.

[CaVO32]

Ever since Ethereum came into inception, Vitalik Buterin has been leading the way for the project's success. While I have nothing against this, sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of crypto in its entirety. There's a reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place without revealing his/her identity to the public. The fact that everybody knows who created Ethereum, could greatly put the project at risk in the future. For instance, if Vitalik dies or something bad happens to him, the price per Ethereum could plummet on the market. Everything Vitalik says has an impact (either directly or indirectly) on the project itself. With Bitcoin, that's not the case since no one knows who Satoshi was. His/her contribution led Bitcoin to take its own steps after he/she left the project. If Ethereum wants to become a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, the project needs to distance itself from the founder.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Ethereum is too tied to Vitalik Buterin? If not, please explain why. Your input will be greatly appreciated.

I think ethereum is the only blockchain network other than bitcoin that has developers working both independently and under a funded contract all around the world from various locations so i do not think that a project of such a scale can depend on a single person, no, never. Even when similar question was asked to Vitalik he clearly said that even i leave Eth tomorrow the project will continue. This just proves the solid decentralized roots of Ethereum as a project and that is the reason why market trusts ethereum the most as an alt.

I think that is a good answer here. Not many people know about this statement of Buterin, that even if he is not there or will leave anytime, Eth platform can still stand on its own. But we can't deny the fact that almost all users are tying up Buterin with Eth, so if in case he will leave eth, it may affect the position of eth in the market, even if they can continue with their respective developments. That is the dilemma here, if the supposed leader will "abandon" his platform, people will speculate a lot. But for now, Buterin is strongly supporting his platform.

[rexxarofmoknathal]

As someone already said, Ethereum has very solid decentralized roots, so it is not depending solely of Vitalik existance, but I do agree that the market seems to look at Ethereum strenght as being directly linked to Vitalik geniality. On a small market like crypto this kind of thing can have an impact if something happens to him, but it would be temporary

While I understand how the founder through his actions may influence the market price of ETH, I think what needs to be considered is the technology this project developed. And since ETH is highly engraved in the crypto industry I think even without Vitalik the area is going to grow and prosper, though initial damage might be possible.
Remember, there's no point in attaching people too much to their outputs since these outputs may be carried on/endorsed by others, and I think ETH has reached the point where others would help take this even further...

[20kevin20]

While I don't think his existence in the Ethereum team is a danger, I think the influence he has over his creation is dangerous in many ways.

A lot of people, I mean too many people think that if Vitalik ever turns out to be a criminal, dies or something, Ethereum would lose the game. Correlating a cryptocurrency with a person's fate just because they created the cryptocurrency makes no sense. If Satoshi broke the silence right now and you found out he was actually a child predator, it'd make no change to Bitcoin.

It's still there and Satoshi's reveal would have absolutely zero impact over a coin. All that would be changed is that we'd know a mysterious person's identity. But there are too many people out there who act based on this stuff and it's actually them making the unnecessary change.

[SlimShadyMmp]

I like to think of Ethereum as a collective project run by various community in different level then maybe Buterin as the main public speaker for the project Yes he is part of the development and a major part for it but I think apart from BTC that has anonymous Creator the rest have team behind the coin that are well known so is no big deal to me

[coupable]

I would also like to think that Ethereum is a collective concept where everybody can contribute, but this is not the truth. If you can develop and participate in the progress of ethereum which is already done by many of us, we can't deny that Buterin still have the ability to change/edit/ignore/add/erase the full code at any time like it happened before with the old forks of Ethereum. This means that we still need to trust him.
Some alternatives are maybe better than Ethereum, but Ethereum still has some unique features which no alternatoive can compete with it.
Let's not to forget that Ethereum reach a great success caused by the smart contracts made to run an ICO or shitty coin created from a thin of air, but it's still a valuable technology that should be opened for everybody and not controlled by a single entity like it's today .

[Darkuso]

Feels like it, I'm hoping this change with ETH 2.0.

[pixie85]

I also think it's too centralized and Vitalik is like the CEO of a company, running things.

He's smart and that helps but if something were to happen to him the price would crash for sure. He's both a strong and a weak point here. Strong as long as he's healthy and actively engaged in the project but things can change very fast.