Vitalik Buterin Reveals 2009 World Of Warcraft Client Patch That Led Him On The Path To Create Ethereum

• Ethereum’s founder has revealed that a change in the World of Warcraft played a role in the creation of Ethereum.
• The computer programmer stated that he was a bulldozer victim and it led him down the path to pursue decentralization.
• Buterin’s Ethereum has spawned into a 400 billion market since its launch and has been seen in myriad use cases.

Inspiration comes in the oddest places and in this case, the inspiration for the creation of Ethereum traces its origin to World of Warcraft. Vitalik Buterin’s latest essay distinguishes the lines between vetocracy and bulldozers.

World Of Warcraft And Ethereum

In an essay released on Dec 19th, Buterin revealed the links between Ethereum and World of Warcraft. The 27-year-old revealed that he was a huge fan of the online multiplayer role-playing game during his formative years and it took a routine patch to ruin all the fun for him.

“I was born in 1994 in Russia and moved to Canada in 2000, where I went to school. I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell,” wrote Buterin. “I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”

While his comments piqued the interest of the community, he downplayed the effects by stating the direct inspiration to Ethereum was perhaps “exaggerated” but the effects the patch had on him were profound and left a lasting impression on him. The infamous patch was last updated on April 14, 2009, and came with several sweeping changes to the gameplay and split opinions between players of the game. Perhaps Vitalik Buterin hoped that the creators put the changes to a vote instead of arbitrarily making them.

The name Ethereum also has a link to science fiction as Buterin has previously revealed that the name came from a list of fictional science elements on Wikipedia. “I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen; I suppose that it was the fact that it sounded nice and it had the word ether, referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel,” said Buterin.

Bulldozers and Vetocracy

In his essay titled the bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis, Buterin divided the political spectrum into two – the bulldozers and proponents of vetocracy. The programmer opined that bulldozers are actors with the power to do important but “potentially risky and disruptive things” without permission. Under vetocracy, disruptive moves will require the “sign-off” of diverse actors in the scheme.

He noted that blockchain base layers should be vetocratic while application layer governance could be more accommodating for bulldozers. He went on to add that bulldozers make grave changes while vetocracy is required in preserving the change created by the bulldozers.