This part of Vitalik's biography might seem incidental, but I find it really illuminating. I think Vitalik is more of a writer than a computer programmer. I mean that as no slight to his coding chops, mind you. He is obviously gifted, to have been able to bring along so many brilliant programmers to make his projects successful. But his ease with fiction and narrative essay is somewhat far afield for many computer scientists. And then there's his affinity for foreign languages. He's a storyteller – and had to be, in many cases, to sell the world on his idea of what Ethereum could be. Paper and pen may be a refuge for him; sometimes in person he can shut down or become terse, such as when conflict arises. He's definitely a writer in that regard, as I recognize the same traits in myself.
Abelard allowed Vitalik to feed his love of language. He already spoke Russian and English, and now he studied French, Latin, and Greek. Brian Blair was Vitalik's teacher for political science and philosophy as well as Latin and Greek. In philosophy, Mr. Blair said he often wanted to give Vitalik more than 100 percent on his tests because he went so far beyond what you'd expect from a high school student. In his 27 years of teaching, Mr. Blair said Vitalik stands alone.
“I've seen a lot of very strong students, but one of the great things about him was that he utilized all the resources the school had, almost like nobody else,” he said. In Greek, Vitalik read Thucydides with Mr. Blair, something he hasn't done with any other student. The Greek historian and general wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War, and while Mr. Blair often read Herodotus with advanced students, he avoids Thucydides because it's just too hard for most students who only have two years of Greek under their belt. “It was challenging for him, you could see the wheels turning,” Mr. Blair said. “It wasn't like the hot knife through butter, which it was almost all the rest of the time.”
Freed in this secure environment, Vitalik began to emerge from the shell of social anxiety that had worried his parents just a few years before. “Abelard played a big huge role in his life, that's where he found his own peers,” said Mr. Sayed. He trusted Vitalik enough that during chemistry class, he'd let Vitalik sit in the back of the class, programming on his laptop. He always did the chemistry homework, and even with his attention elsewhere, Vitalik earned a 99 percent in the class. He was no longer the shy and awkward kid who'd started at Abelard, but had become one of the more popular kids in the school. He mentored other students and freely gave his time to help whoever needed it. “As a teacher, you see these kids and you know, these are the people who are going to change the world in a positive sense,” Mr. Sayed said. “He was one of them.”
Mr. Blair made a point that his other teachers repeated – Vitalik was never cocky or a smart-ass. “There was a real humility to him, despite his incredible abilities, and that's really unusual in a high school kid,” Mr. Blair said.
Outside of class, Vitalik started entering math and computer programming competitions. These were contests like the Canadian Computer Competition and the National Olympiad for Informatics, where students, either individually or in teams, are given several hours to solve math or programming problems. Vitalik soon made a name for himself. In 2010, he placed in the Metro Division for Toronto in the University of Waterloo's Canadian Computer Competition with his partner, Zachary Devine. The next year, he made the honor roll of the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge and placed third in the CASCON High School Computer Programming Competition. In 2012, he was selected as one of four students to represent Canada at the International Olympiad in Informatics in Italy.
At Abelard, he won just about every award there is to win. There was the Alexander Award for junior accomplishment in 2009, then the Archimedes Award for excellence in classics his sophomore year. As a junior he earned the Villon Award for excellence in French language and literature; as a senior he took home the Turing Award for excellence in computer science and computational mathematics and the Governor General's Award for the school's top graduating student. At graduation, as Vitalik was called up on stage time and again to collect his accolades, Mr. Sayed happened to be the teacher handing out awards. He gave Vitalik a good-natured hard time and said that the next time he called him up he should bring his backpack on stage since he was being overloaded with medals. The next time Vitalik was called, he brought his knapsack with him.
Vitalik's presence is still felt at Abelard. In a montage of student portraits that hangs on the wall in the main office, a young-looking Vitalik smiles from the very middle of the arrangement, as though at the heart of the kids who have passed through its halls. In 2018, he donated $500,000 to the school, no strings attached. The school is using the money in part to create a scholarship for students who excel across all subject matters, as Vitalik did.
If one document, one piece of evidence, from that time in his life sums up his varied and transformational time at the school, a good bet would be his yearbook entry. It's by turns funny and academic and geeky. In his senior picture, he stares out of the frame with almost no expression on his face – certainly not a smile – his light blue eyes set in a steady gaze, a brush of acne across his cheeks. He is listed as Vitalik – Professor X – Buterin, a nod to his love of science fiction and the charismatic leader of the X-Men.
He lists his superpower as invisibility, “with all the reasonable corequisites as described by Ancient Greek mythology, as well as a passive aura that constantly either adds hydrogen to the universe or decreases entropy.”
The yearbook allowed students to describe their future prospects, which Vitalik listed as “computer programmer.” The yearbook staff then had their say: “Steve Jobs 2.0 … Now with hair!”
Two
Like so many days in Seattle, Friday, June 17, 2016, was slightly overcast with the chance of rain. That afternoon on the edge of town, Dax Hansen left the city on the ferry for Bainbridge Island where he lives. Hansen was one of the earliest lawyers to get involved in blockchain technology and helped shape the early industry though his work as a partner at Perkins Coie. So news of the DAO hack had reached him. When he arrived on Bainbridge Island he saw his friend Peter Vessenes waiting to take the ferry back to Seattle. Vessenes had long been in the blockchain world, and Dax knew he'd have heard too.
“Wow, big day, huh?” Dax said to Peter.
“Yeah,” Vessenes said. “I'd already been looking into that and saw some vulnerabilities. I warned people this was going to happen.”
Bainbridge Island is about as idyllic a location as you are going to find in the US. If only the cars could be removed it would feel like Cabot Cove waiting for one of Jessica Fletcher's nieces to get murdered. There's wood everywhere. Evergreens come right up to the edge of steep cliffs with houses peeking from between the limbs. Sailboats and motorboats fill a small harbor just across from the ferry terminal. The ferry dock is made of dark V-shaped planks of wood. It all has the feel of another time. Just outside the main terminal, where the taxis line up, Dax and Peter chatted about the DAO.
By 2016, Peter Vessenes had been around the crypto world for a long time. He cofounded the Bitcoin Foundation and started CoinLab, a Bitcoin project incubator that signed a deal in 2012 to handle the US and Canadian customers of Mt. Gox, the largest early Bitcoin exchange, according to Reuters. A year later, a string of lawsuits between the two companies began as CoinLab accused Mt. Gox of not handing over the customer accounts as promised, Reuters said. Vessenes later shut CoinLab down, according to the news agency.
By 2016, Vessenes was a consultant to blockchain firms and did some security work on his own. He became interested in smart contracts and Ethereum and decided to look into why some smart contracts are so dumb. The first one he examined, Ethstick, was a “pyramid scheme which incentivizes participants (donkeys) to keep depositing money to get the payout (carrot),” he wrote in a blog post dated May 18, 2016. “As each payment comes in, a ‘lucky donkey’ is chosen for payout; the lucky one is chosen