Layer Zero: Dmitry Buterin
Primer: In this first episode of Layer Zero podcast, David Hoffman interviews Dmitry Buterin, the founder of Vitalik Buterin. Layer Zero is about the people behind the code and their story. As such, Dmitry should really be Layer negative one. Learn more about his life in Communist Soviet Union, his obsessions with computing and his thoughts about spirituality and mindfulness with regards to the Ethereum community.
Dmitry Buterin
Who is Dmitry Buterin?
"For listeners who are trying to get a grip of what LayerZero is, Layer Zero is about the people that compose this fantastic community that we are all a part of. And Dimitri Buterin is Vitalik Buterin's father, so technically, he's like, layer negative one, whatever comes right before zero."
- David Hoffman
Grew up in the Chechen capital of Grozny, in Soviet Union's southern border that is close to Afghanistan
Staying in Canada now
As a child, he is saturated with a lot of propaganda about the all-powerful, benevolent and perfect state. But as he grew older, he realized there is a discrepancy between what is real and what is propaganda
In the Soviet Union or even modern-day Russia, the individual is not respected and does not matter, only the collective does. You are just told where to go, where to work and what to do
His insatiable curiosity
Very curious since young and got interested in electronics
Had a huge library at home which help him grow and satisfy his curiosity about everything
It is very hard to get books in the Soviet Union and to get new books, about 10 kg of old books had to be recycled
His childhood is not surrounded by gadgets because the Soviet Union was poor compared to the West and only the elites will have access to these
His interest in all things related to computers
He got interested in electronics, cybernetics and basic computer systems and eventually went to University to study that
First touched a computer around age 15 or 16 when he went to some factory organisation organised by the school to gain experience
His first introduction to computers is from a programmable calculator that the Soviet Union probably copied from the West
It had only about 100 bytes of ram memory, and even then, people are making codes to build little games on it. This inventiveness for building stuff fascinated him
This curiosity leads him to test the boundaries of complex systems to explore what they are capable of doing but are not supposed to do
"My very first job? I was a software engineer actually, in the bank."
- Dmitry Buterin
How often does he check $ETH price?
A few times every day
Dmitry noticed that when prices go down, it'll affect the mood of people, When the price shoots up, there is a lot more noise in the space
But even when the price is down, there are lots of passionate people building stuff
Weightlifting
Been bad in terms of his progress with weightlifting because all the gyms near Toronto have been closed (due to Covid)
Dmitry's number one exercise for the last 1.5 yrs has been walking
He was tall and nerdy when he was younger and was bullied, so he wanted to get bigger and hence, he had been exercising since 17
He is a believer in free weight and not those fancy machines
His Max squat record was 350 pounds, beating Danny Ryan's record of about 300 pounds. Way exceeding David's too
Dislikes group chats and the news
Do not like group chats or Discord in general because it is too noisy. Prefers real-life one to one conversations
Meeting face to face has a real deep human connection even if the connection is only once or twice a year
In the last business he sold, they are using Slack as a communication tool, but he did not want to be in it because most of the time it is just short term noise. He prefers to work on longer-term, slow strategic thinking
Stopped watching the news for 20 years and his TV is more for watching movies, not TV programs
Twitter is his current preferred social media hangout place and whatever is important will be mentioned there
Due to his roots, he still keeps a keen interest in things related to Russia, but his main interest is still in crypto and the decentralised tech space
Vitalik Buterin
Attracted to computers and Excel
Met Vitalik's mum in the same computing class at the university in 1989 and Vitalik was born in 1994
Vitalik had access to computers when he was really young, at around age 4 or 5
He got curious and interested in playing with the old IBM PC they gave him
He loved Excel because you could draw circles and fill them with colours and so on
Learnt numbers very early on as math was an obsession and a joyful pursuit for him
But very quickly, Vitalik got interested in the actual Excel functions when he realised he could put numbers inside Excel and use the functions to do interesting things
"One of the most salient metaphors I've heard about Ethereum lately came out of the Tim Ferriss podcast with Naval. And he illustrated Ethereum is just like a global Excel sheet that we all can write to, and you're telling Vitalik first two things about him was his obsession with math and his tinkering with Excel?"
- David Hoffman
At around age 7, he started learning his first programming language, Visual Basic, which was built into Microsoft Office
Loves Numbers
As a kid, Vitalik is different and special in their own unique ways
Quite obvious that he is a smart child when he started to read by around age 3 and liking math and all its symbols
When he was around 6 and started playing with Lego sets, he was building numbers and having some kind of special digital animals, so he was playing with math, not just in his head, but also in the physical world
The Social Skills of Vitalik
Moved to Canada when Vitalik was 6 years old and did not attend any public institutions like kindergarten in Russia, hence was not exposed to the propaganda of the state
He is mostly influenced by family and the nurturing environment they provided him with
In an environment surrounded by family and friends, Vitalik is more open and relaxed and he has a great sense of humour
This is the side that Dmitry sees all the time, but it's good that people outside are finally seeing more of this aspect of him that Dmitry already knows
As our system gets more used to the environment, we do less of the fight-or-flight mode and the natural energy that we have inside us come out more and more frequently
This is a non-linear process where a human will adapt and change as the environment changes
This explains David's observation that Vitalik used to be a socially awkward kid but he now has one of the best social skills in the crypto space
Vitalik's safety from the perspective of a parent
Dmitry is not fearful with regards to Vitalik's safety
He being fearful will not help his safety at all
Vitalik is a smart guy and they will share tips and ideas on how to stay safe, but at the end of the day, all of us have to face our fears and keep moving forward
It is good that the community has less dependence on him or any particular human being for that matter
Spirituality and mindfulness
Why is Dmitry interested in spirituality and mindfulness?
Dmitry's curiosity about computers eventually lead him to want to understand humans, who are very complex subjects, which led him to be interested in personal development and psychology
9 years ago when he was about 40 years old, he read books by Sam Harris and changed his perspective on spirituality. He gained a way to map any religious concepts to his own understanding of the universe
Before that, he faced a lot of resistance in learning about spirituality because Soviet propaganda is very against religion and anything related to that, so reading these topics are very hard for him until he read Sam Harris's book
Dmitry thinks that spirituality is about the investigation of the most fundamental questions of who we are and where we are going
There are many avenues to explore this space ranging from meditation to LSD
What kind of thoughts does he think with regards to spirituality?
Has a keen interest in non-duality
Likes to explore questions of this nature:
What is consciousness?
What is God?
What is Love?
What is happiness?
There are no good answers to these, and probably impossible to figure out the answers analytically. However, it is still fun for him to explore it himself and with close friends
It is important to accept different aspects of ourselves and be non-judgemental because once we do so, the natural energy inherent in all humans, like love, compassion and inclusiveness will shine through
Is mindfulness at the core of the Ethereum community?
David mentioned that he found the Ethereum community to be very inclusive and shares a feeling of mindfulness about the world
Dmitry wonders if kindness is a better word instead of mindfulness because mindfulness is about being deeply immersed in one's perceptions and a deep connection with one's emotions
"And that is a layer of values that we are all now embedded upon. And so I kind of think that the long term legacy of Ethereum is to get all humans on the same value system. And that value system is Ethereum."
- David Hoffman
These values are implemented in the design choices and the way the codes are written, so when Ethereum becomes more successful and widely adopted, these values will also grow to touch anyone using Ethereum
The core of the Ethereum community is that people value other people's values
Dmitry confessed that both Vitalk and himself are not quite there yet with mindfulness
Is Spirituality is relevant to Ethereum?
Asking the most fundamental questions about ourselves will make us develop our sensitivity in observing patterns, which is what intuition really is
And this pattern is about interconnectedness to each other and being open and inclusive
The universe had run different experiments with authoritarianism over the last 100 years or so. Recently been running this with Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Authoritarianism seems to be failing. Collectivist experiments seem to fail too because these are really just disguised authoritarianism
Communism tries to deny individualism and capitalism but Ethereum does not work on this kind of energy
Ethereum is built more like an open experiment to see what works and to explore possibilities
The universe is also running a technological experiment with Ethereum
Bitcoin is seen to be strong and simple, where everything is perfect as it is and there is no need to change anything
But being strong and trying to resist everything is a limited strategy because, in the long term, everything will eventually break down
However, Ethereum is running a different sort of experiment to see if it works. The approach is a softer, more open and more resilient system that keeps evolving. This is somewhat aligned with how the universe works
To summarise, spirituality is an investigation of what life is and what we are, this leads us to see the interconnectedness of things and see how things are fluid and always changing and open
Ethereum is not just a point in the political compass quadrant
David talks about the political compass quadrant
Bitcoin is in one specific spot, but Ethereum is not any specific spot - it is the entire quadrants
Ethereum can be built to reflect anything that humans value and the community as a whole can always push it towards a side of the political compass so desired
It can even optimise for different parts of the political compass
Dmitry likes the idea - we have models about how the world works but models will fail as we understand more
Eventually, we may develop models that are more inclusive and Ethereum is all about that
"And now we have this Ethereum thing, which is like this technocratic political fabric thing that allows different people to do different things on it. And if that thing works, if that experiment works, then it exists as an application on Ethereum."
- David Hoffman
Watching Ethereum grow
Flying around globally
Dmitry remembers the day that Vitalik came home one day and announced that he is thinking of dropping out of university
Dmitry is supportive of that and believes that life is much more than just academic knowledge and it is good for Vitalik to be exposed to the world beyond books
Vitalik travelled around the world trying to garner support for Ethereum, and he will update them with his long emails
Through his travelling, Vitalik was exposed to a world that is very different from the relative comfort of Western countries like Canada
E.g. He updates through his email that sometimes he only has one meal a day and that the only fruit available is a lemon or that he has to sleep on the floor
It's good to know that there are other people living in a harsher environment than he is used to and that one can also survive in these harsher environments
Ethereum's first white paper
Dmitry wished he could have involved himself more with this son's project but at that time, he was building up his own business, so he was watching more from the sideline
He still remembers Vitalik showing him his first copy of the white paper around October 2013
He read through it and thought that it looks like something important
He tried to impart his own ideas into the project but Vitalik was not receptive to it
Dmitry was more familiar with hierarchical structures and it was a learning experience for him to see how the fluid and open community of Ethereum works
It has been a privilege to watch Ethereum grow from a single cell to an embryo and eventually becoming a powerful organism that is evolving and beginning to affect society at large
David mentioned that Ethereum uprooted his life, and likely that of Anthony Sassano
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