XFollowList Find a person
Vitalik Buterin’s avatar

Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum co-founder and researcher

Long-form arguments about Ethereum's design, decentralization and the tradeoffs behind proposed protocol changes.

@VitalikButerin on X

Community rating

91

Vote once every 24 hours. No account needed.

Why read Vitalik Buterin?

Read Vitalik for the reasoning behind a protocol proposal. His essays set out a problem, compare designs and explain their costs. In Simplifying the L1, the question is how Ethereum can become easier to understand and maintain while continuing to support existing applications. The distinction between consensus-critical logic and other software makes the proposal easier to follow.

The Scourge essay turns decentralization into specific design questions: who chooses transactions, who orders them and why economies of scale favor large operators. Read it after the simplicity essay to see a second kind of tradeoff. Both are proposals and arguments with their own publication dates, useful for understanding a debate before following its later development.

Selected work

  1. Essay,

    Why should a blockchain protocol be simpler? Follow his division of consensus-critical code, historical compatibility and useful supporting software before reading the proposed virtual-machine transition.

    Cite this selection

    XFollowList, “Simplifying the L1” reading notes in the Vitalik Buterin profile. https://xfollowlist.com/people/vitalik-buterin#work-ea7f9d4ff568

    The linked work is the original source; this permalink identifies XFollowList’s reason to read it. Original work published .

    Profile-source checking date and references · Dated reading map

  2. Essay,

    Who gets to choose and order transactions? This technical essay compares ways to distribute authority in block production and discusses the pressure for staking and building to concentrate.

    Cite this selection

    XFollowList, “Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge” reading notes in the Vitalik Buterin profile. https://xfollowlist.com/people/vitalik-buterin#work-f0ec0222ec86

    The linked work is the original source; this permalink identifies XFollowList’s reason to read it. Original work published .

    Profile-source checking date and references · Dated reading map

Projects & roles

  • Ethereum

    The network whose original whitepaper and subsequent protocol design he helped develop.

  • Vitalik's writing

    His own archive of protocol research and broader essays.

Linked wallets

Tokens in linked wallets

Open a token on Yieldo for its holders, DEX activity and contract details.

Ethereum0xd8da…6045

Sources & further reading

Profile sources checked . This describes checking these references, separately from the publication dates of selected works.

Cite this profile’s source check

XFollowList, Vitalik Buterin profile sources. Sources checked 2026-10-09. https://xfollowlist.com/people/vitalik-buterin#sources-checked