2026-10-30
Top 100 Product Managers · #44 | Vitalik Buterin: At 19, He Turned 'Programmable Money' from a White Paper into a World Computer
[DO AI PM Top 100 Product Managers · #44] In 2010, Blizzard casually nerfed the Warlock's Siphon Life spell in World of Warcraft. A 16-year-old Vitalik Buterin cried himself to sleep, quit the game, and realized the fatal flaw of centralized software. At 19, he wrote the Ethereum White Paper, turning blockchains from pocket calculators into a Turing-complete World Computer. At 28, he hot-swapped the consensus engine of a $300B live network with zero downtime, cutting its energy use by 99.95%. Score: 87.3 (#44).
