今天是以太坊创始人维塔利克·布特林的24岁生日，转发此文章到朋友圈，你的微信钱包就会多出1枚价值7000多人民币的以太币。我已经试过了，是骗人的。
文 / 九月
Man / & nbsp; September
“生命虹吸都没了，术士还叫什么术士！”
2010年，16岁的少年维塔利克愤怒的删除了《魔兽世界》客户端，因为暴雪刚刚在3.10补丁中移除了术士的技能“生命虹吸”，并将它改成了天赋。
In 2010, 16-year-old Vitalik angryly removed the World of Monsters client, as snowstorms had just removed the magician's skill of “life insinuation” in 3.10 patches and transformed it into a gift.
对此，维塔利克曾在暴雪官方论坛提出抗议，但没有收获任何官方答复。他意识到了网络游戏“中心化管理”的弊端——游戏的拥有者是暴雪，他们可以不问玩家意见，随意修改游戏内容。
Vitalik protested at the official snowstorms forum, but did not receive any official response. He realized the evils of "centralizing management" in online games — the game owners are snowstorms, and they can change the game without asking their players for advice.
于是他决定放弃这款游戏，尽管他已经在他的术士身上花费了3年心血。
So he decided to abandon the game, even though he had spent three years with his magicians.
告别了“魔兽”的维塔利克转而开始研究当时刚刚出现不久的比特币，一种去中心化数字货币。
Vitalik, who said goodbye to the beast, began to study bitcoin, a decentralised digital currency, which had just emerged.
几年后，维塔利克公布了初版《以太坊白皮书》，并通过ICO众筹获得了最初的启动金。这一年他19岁。
A few years later, Vitalik published his first edition of the Etherno White Paper and obtained initial start-up money through the ICO. He was 19 years old this year.
如今，维塔利克的新身份是以太坊创始人，被众多数字货币追随者称为“V神”，经常与他相提并论的人物是Facebook创始人马克·扎克伯格。维塔利克的账户里约有50万个以太币，按照今天的市价折合人民币36亿。
Today, Vitalik’s new identity is that of the founder of the Taiku, known as “God V” by many digital money followers, often matched by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Vitalik’s account is in Rio with half a million Ethers, equivalent to the RMB 3.6 billion at today’s market value.
24年前的1月31日（没错他的确今天过生日），维塔利克·布特林出生在俄罗斯的一个IT家庭，他的父母都在莫斯科的一所大学中从事计算机科研工作，这让他从小就有了接触高新科技的机会。
Twenty-four years ago, on 31 January (and indeed today's birthday), Vitalik Butrin was born in an IT family in Russia, and his parents worked in computer science at a university in Moscow, which gave him access to high-tech technology from an early age.
4岁那年，父亲送给他了人生中的第一台计算机，从此以后，他最喜欢的玩具就变成了Excel。
When he was 4 years old, his father gave him his first computer in his life, and his favorite toy became Excel.
上了小学之后，维塔利克在数学方面的天赋开始展现，他能用超出同龄人两倍的速度直接心算出很多复杂的计算，于是升上三年级之后，他立刻被学校分到了专为天才儿童准备的尖子班。
After attending primary school, Vitalik's talent in mathematics began to show that he had been able to calculate many complex calculations at more than twice the speed of his peers, and immediately after reaching third grade, he was assigned to a cutting-edge class designed for gifted children.
这时候的维塔利克已经开始试着自己编写游戏程序了，成品包括一个模拟弹球在房间中运动轨迹的小程序，改造版的《太空侵略者》，以及一款中世纪奇幻主题的战棋游戏。
At that time, Vitalik had begun to try to develop his own game program, which included a small program to simulate the trajectory of bouncy balls in a room, a modified version of Space Invaders, and a chess game on a century-long miraculous theme.
不过2007年的时候，他和身边的很多同龄人一样，沉迷于暴雪出品的网络游戏《魔兽世界》，一玩就是一整天。
But in 2007, like many of his peers, he was fascinated by a snowstorming online game, The World of Monsters, all day long.
他的角色是一名精通恶魔法术的术士，伴随着他的恶魔随从，一路从经典旧世玩到了“巫妖王之怒”。
His role is that of a magician with a master of the magic of the devil, accompanied by his devil, who has played from the old classics to the wrath of the Lord of the Witches.
在这期间，维塔利克的父亲和他聊起了比特币的事情，但显然后者没有对此提起任何兴趣。
During this period, Vitalik's father talked to him about Bitcoin, but the latter apparently did not raise any interest in it.
“那时候我真的觉得，没什么能比《魔兽世界》更好玩了，直到那天暴雪删除了我最爱的技能。”
接下来就有了开头的那段故事：维塔利克彻底告别了魔兽，开始接触加密数字货币。随着维塔利克对比特币的了解逐渐深入，他开始对这个“去中心化”体系产生了强烈的兴趣——暴雪删除生命虹吸就是“中心化”的结果。
And then there's the beginning of the story: Vitaly's complete farewell to the monster and his exposure to encrypted digital money. As Vitaly's knowledge of Bitcoin developed, he began to have a strong interest in the system of decentralization – the result of the "centralization" of the snow removal of the life rainbow.
还在读高中的维塔利克打算干点什么，赚几枚属于自己的比特币。
Vitalik, who is still in high school, intends to do something and earn a few bits of his own.
他开始给一个以比特币为主题的网站写博文日志赚稿费，每篇稿酬是5比特币——在当时的价值是不到4美元。
He began to pay the cost of writing a copy of a book log on a website whose theme was Bitcoin, with five bitcoins per piece — less than US$ 4 at the time.
对技术出身的维塔利克来说，写科技类博文是一项非常容易的工作，于是，网站上署名“维塔利克·布特林”的文章越来越多。他开始在文章的末尾加上自己的比特币钱包地址，并声称一旦收到足够的捐款，他就会继续写下一篇文章。
For a technologist, Vitalik, it is a very easy job to write a science-type blog, and so there are more and more articles on the website, Vitalik Butrin. He starts adding his own bitcoin wallet address to the end of the article and claims that he will continue to write the next article once he receives enough donations.
这一举动让他收获了大量的比特币，虽然当时的比特币还不怎么值钱。
This move allowed him to reap a large amount of bitcoin, although the bitcoin was not very valuable at the time.
业界声望逐渐提升的维塔利克找到了几位志同道合的伙伴，创办了行业杂志《Bitcoin Magazine》（比特币杂志），继续以撰稿人身份维持着对比特币的研究。
Vitalik, whose reputation has been rising, has found several like-minded partners, created the industry magazine Bitcoin Magazine (bitcoin magazine) and continues to maintain its research as a contributor.
撰稿时期，维塔利克来到了滑铁卢大学读书。但过了半年多，他发现自己没办法兼顾学业与比特币的研究。维塔利克选择了一条很多IT领袖走过的老路：辍学。
At the time of writing, Vitalik went to Waterloo University. But after more than six months, he found himself unable to balance his studies with his studies in Bitcoin. Vitalik chose an old path that many IT leaders had taken: dropping out of school.
因为辍学这一举动，他还拿到了一笔不算少的财富：来自泰尔奖学金的10万美元现金。
As a result of dropping out of school, he also received a modest amount of money: $100,000 in cash from the Ter scholarship.
泰尔奖学金是一个非常特殊的基金会，这个协会每年会选出20~25位辍学两年以上的少年，为他们颁发一大笔奖金，鼓励创业。
The Ter Scholarship is a very special foundation that annually selects 20 to 25 young people who have dropped out of school for more than two years, giving them a large bonus to encourage entrepreneurship.
这时候的维塔利克已经非常富有了。除了那10万美元奖学金，更多的资产来自于撰稿时期攒下的比特币：2013年的比特币的价值，已经从当时的不到1美元猛增到了近1000美元一枚。
Vitalik was already very rich at that time. In addition to the $100,000 scholarship, more assets came from bitcoin that had been saved during the writing period: the value of bitcoin in 2013 had risen sharply from less than $1 at that time to nearly $1,000 apiece.
财务自由的维塔利克选择了周游世界，在全球范围内推广去中心化理念以及比特币所使用的区块链技术。
Vitalik, which is financially free, has chosen to travel the world by promoting the concept of decentralisation and block chain technology used in Bitcoin on a global scale.
也正是在这段时间里，维塔利克意识到了比特币在先天的设计上就有一些无法突破的局限性。他曾在官方论坛与比特币高层管理人员提出改进建议，但和《魔兽世界》经历过的事情一样，他的建议没有收到任何答复。
It was also during this period that Vitalik realized that bitcoin had some inexorable limitations in its ingenuity design. He had proposed improvements in official forums with Bitcoin’s top management, but, like what the world of monsters had experienced, he had not received any response to his proposal.
但这一回维塔利克没有默不作声。此时的他已经对数字货币和区块链技术有了足够认知，他的做法是另起炉灶。
But there was no silence in Vitalik this time. At this point, he had enough knowledge of digital money and block chain technology, and his approach was to start something else.
维塔利克在2013年公布了他的宏伟计划，并发表初版《以太坊白皮书》，这时候的他年仅19岁。
Vitalik published his ambitious plan in 2013 and his first edition of the Etheria White Paper, which he was only 19 years old.
在白皮书中，他肯定了比特币网络“分布式数据库”的伟大理念，但也指出它的缺点：扩展性不足，只有比特币一种符号。而以太坊则可以视为一台分布式的电脑，任何人都可以在以太坊上传和执行应用程序，矿工们就像是负责计算的CPU，共同组成一个去中心化的世界计算机。
In the White Paper, he affirmed the great idea of the “distributed database” of the Bitcoin network, but also pointed to its shortcomings: it was not sufficiently expansionary, with only bitcoin as a symbol. The Etherms could be regarded as a distributed computer, and anyone could upload and execute applications in the Taiku, where miners were like CPUs, which were responsible for calculating the world’s computers.
2014年，维塔利克回到了多伦多，带着他的《以太币白皮书》开启了ICO众筹。
In 2014, Vitalik returned to Toronto and launched the ICO campaign with his White Paper on Ether.
就像初期的比特币一样，以太坊在前两年也处于无人问津的阶段，只有少数懂得其中意义的极客愿意参与其中，当时的以太币价格不足1美元。同样类似比特币的发展趋势，2017年3月开始，以太币价值忽然一路高歌猛进，从不到10美元的价格一路飙升至6月的250美元。
Like the initial bitcoin, Ether was in the middle of nowhere in the first two years, with only a handful of eminent guests willing to take part in it, at a price of less than $1. Similar to the development of Bitcoin, which began in March 2017, when the value of the titanium rose suddenly, from a price of less than $10 to $250 in June.
而到了今天，以太币已经成为仅次于比特币的市值第二加密货币，每枚价格约为1169美元，折合人民币7383元，是一年前的一百多倍。
Today, the Ether has become the second encrypted currency of the market, after Bitcoin, at a price of approximately $1,169 each, equivalent to RMB 7383, more than a hundred times that of a year ago.
以太币暴涨的背后并不是泡沫，是因为很多投资人看好它在现实领域的应用。
The boom in the Ether is not a bubble, because many investors view its application in the real world.
2017年3月，摩根大通、芝加哥交易所、微软、英特尔等全球20多家顶级金融机构与科技公司共同成立了以太坊联盟，旨在合作开发标准与技术，使企业能够更加容易地使用以太坊区块链代码，降低企业成本。目前，联盟的成员数已近200家。
In March 2017, more than 20 top financial institutions around the world, such as Morgan Chase, the Chicago Exchange, Microsoft, and Intel, established the Etherworld Alliance, which aims to work together to develop standards and technologies that will make it easier for businesses to use the Ether district chain code and reduce business costs. At present, the Alliance has nearly 200 members.
2017年6月，俄罗斯总统普京本人在圣彼得堡的国际经济论坛上亲自接见了这位出生在俄罗斯的年轻人。虽然会面的细节未被公开，但有一件事情是可以确认的：普京表示非常看好区块链技术，将对其给予充分支持。这一会面让加密货币社区的成员们非常兴奋——这项技术不仅是极客们自娱自乐的玩具，而且很有可能作为新的工具被银行、企业、监管机构甚至国家机关所应用。
While the details of the meeting were not made public, one thing can be confirmed: Putin expressed a keen interest in block chain technology, which would be fully supported. The meeting was very exciting for members of the encoded monetary community – a technique that was not only a toy for the guests to entertain themselves, but was likely to be used as a new tool by banks, businesses, regulators, and even national authorities.
反对派的声音也在同期出现，有一些极端分子甚至在网上散布谣言声称维塔利克已经死于车祸，这一行为使以太币的价值在当日狂跌了30%。只不过几天之后，维塔利克以一种非常极客的方式证明了自己还活着：他拿着一张手写字条发了自拍，字条上写着即时生成的以太坊区块链最新高度。
Opposition voices also appeared during the same period, with some extremists spreading online rumours that Vitalik had died in a car accident, an act that caused a 30% collapse in the value of the talisman that day. Only a few days later, Vitalik proved himself alive in a very extreme way: he took a selfie with a handwritten note and wrote the latest height of the immediately generated Ether block chain.
能在20几岁实现这样的成就，离不开他强大的学习能力。除了IT领域的天赋之外，他还能无障碍使用中文。
In addition to his talent in IT, he is able to use Chinese in an accessible way.
2016年，他曾来过中国调查，并数次在聊天室中与中国网友互动。每次交流，他都操着一口流利的汉语。
In 2016, he came to China to investigate and interacted with Chinese netizens in chat rooms on several occasions.
“从2013年开始我就在观察中国市场，我很看好数字货币在这里的发展前途。另外，我爸说中文很难，他曾经自学但是失败了。我想向他证明一下我的能力。”
与现阶段的比特币不太一样，以太币一般直接使用显卡挖矿。
Unlike the bitcoin at this stage, it is generally used directly to dig mines using a card.
如果你曾关注过去年5、6月份的显卡价格，会发现这段时间的高端显卡贵得离谱。导致这一局面的根本原因就是以太币价格上涨，全球矿工激增，显卡缺货。而今这一局面又在重演：2018年1月末，一块1060的价格已经接近2500元，更适宜挖矿的A卡RX580更是突破了4000元大关。
The root cause of this situation is the increase in the price of the talisman, the surge in global miners, and the shortage of the cards. And this is happening again: by the end of January 2018, the price of a $1060 was close to $2,500, and the AKA RX580, which is better suited for mining, was a $4,000 break.
2017年年末，福布斯杂志评选出了30位改变全球金融的30岁以下人士，这位刚满24岁的年轻人位列其中。
如果不是当初暴雪的一个微小举动让维塔利克放弃了《魔兽世界》，或许数字货币界就不会出现这位年轻的意见领袖，区块链技术也不会这么快投入现实应用领域。某种意义上来说，这也是一个“游戏改变人生”的真实故事。
Late in 2017, the Forbes magazine selected 30 people under the age of 30 to change global finance, a young man just over the age of 24. If
had it not been for a small move in the snow that had caused Vitalick to give up the World of Monsters, perhaps there would have been no young opinion leader in the digital-currency world, and block-chain technology would not have been put into practice so quickly.
区块链与游戏应用结合例子已经出现了，比如我们此前报道过的以太坊云养猫游戏《CryptoKitties》。
Examples of the combination of block chains and game applications have emerged, such as CryptoKittys, which we have previously reported as a cat-breeding game.
另一方面，因为试错成本远低于真实世界，用游戏来测试区块链在现实社会的应用也是个不错的点子——拥有超过200万玩家用户的游戏虚拟商品交易平台Gameflip已经明确表示支持比特币交易，基于以太坊建立的电子竞技平台Firstblood也已经开始运营。
On the other hand, because the costs of trial error are far lower than in the real world, it is also a good idea to use games to test the application of block chains in real societies — the virtual merchandise trading platform of the game, which has more than 2 million players, Gameflip, has made clear its support for the Bitcoin deal, and the electronic competition platform, based on the e-Roy platform set up by Taiku, Firstblood, is already operational.
看回国内，在以太坊云养猫游戏的带动下，大大小小的游戏公司也纷纷表示要涉足区块链项目：原经营主体为渔业的壹桥股份上市养马游戏《宝利马》，网易游戏随即公开《招财猫》，美国工作室推出、蓝港互动参与的《加密狗》也迅速加入战场，一时间似乎不沾个区块链这些做游戏的公司都不好意思出来见人。
Back home, under the umbrella of the Taiwan Cat-raising game, big and small game companies have also expressed their interest in the block chain project: the Pony Lima game, which was marketed for the shares of the bridge that formerly owned the fishing industry, was made public as soon as the game was made public, and the Encrypted Dog, which was launched by the United States studio and engaged in interaction with Blueport, quickly joined the battlefield, with the company that played the game, which seemed to be ashamed to be present.
2018年，区块链技术能不能为游戏以及互联网行业带来一场新的技术革新，我们拭目以待。
In 2018, we'll see if block chain technology can bring about a new technological innovation in the game and the Internet industry.
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