Just now, I saw someone discussing the story of V God again, and I couldn't help but think of the legendary beginning. In 2014, a young Russian guy came to Hangzhou and generously distributed 5,000 virtual coins at a conference, hoping to showcase his technology. What happened next? Almost everyone doubted him, treating him as a scammer, with only a few believing. But do you know what happened later? Those 5,000 free coins skyrocketed to $150 million... That is Ethereum (ETH), and that young man is V God—Vitalik Buterin.

Talking about V God's growth experience, it's quite interesting. Between ages 13 and 16, he was obsessed with World of Warcraft, especially loving the Warlock class. Once, after leveling up in the game, Blizzard removed his favorite skill, which made him realize deeply—that in a centralized internet world, all players are vulnerable. This experience changed his life trajectory, leading him to think about whether there was a way to break the centralized model. It wasn't until he discovered Bitcoin at age 17 that he found the answer.

The decentralization feature of blockchain attracted V God, but as he delved deeper, he found the limitations of Bitcoin. At the end of 2013, he published the paper "Ethereum: A Next Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform," which analyzed Bitcoin's design and shortcomings in detail, and proposed the vision of Ethereum—a platform where various decentralized applications could be built. The paper caused a sensation upon release, receiving widespread praise from the Bitcoin community, and some people proactively sought collaboration with V God. In July 2014, Ethereum officially launched its crowdfunding, successfully raising 31,000 Bitcoins.

The story that followed became even more exciting. In 2016, The DAO project was hacked, and 3.6 million ETH were stolen, raising doubts about Ethereum's security. V God and the Ethereum Foundation decided to perform a hard fork to recover the losses, but some insisted that "code is law" and continued mining on the original chain, which eventually split into Ethereum Classic (ETC).

The 2017 crypto bull market was truly crazy. Because ETH could only be mined with graphics cards, GPU prices soared, with some GPUs sold containing 9.5 cards used for mining and only half for gaming. That year, the ICO craze swept the entire market, with projects like EOS and Quantum Chain raising funds on Ethereum, and even virtual pet projects pushing ETH prices higher, until the ban on ICOs by countries in September 2017 gradually cooled the market.

The crash in March 2020 left a deep impression—ETH dropped from a high of $1,500 to $87 in panic selling. But then DeFi exploded, with total value locked in decentralized finance protocols exceeding $10 billion, growing over 2000%. Most of these DeFi projects were built on Ethereum, with tokens like YFI soaring by thousands or even tens of thousands of times, pushing ETH to new heights.

The 2021 bull run saw ETH prices surge to around $4.95k, a 16k-fold increase from the initial issuance price. Virtual land, NFT projects worth millions of dollars, and the entire market was telling legendary stories. Later, Ethereum transitioned from PoW to PoS, and Layer 2 networks launched, creating new wealth opportunities—participating in testnets and earning airdrops. Many created hundreds of Ethereum addresses to farm tokens, earning millions or even tens of millions of dollars.

Now, the focus has shifted to the Layer 2 competition. As mainnet load increases and transaction fees rise, networks like Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), ZKSync (ZKS), and Striketh (STRK) are fiercely competing, and the future of crypto might be a race among Layer 2 solutions.

V God and Ethereum's story is truly full of challenges and twists. From being mocked as a scammer to becoming a legendary figure in the blockchain world, this project has created countless wealth opportunities. Whether you're a newcomer or a veteran, you should keep paying attention to Ethereum's development. Currently, ETH is around $2.31k, and regardless, this is a field worth deep exploration.