Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains

by Vitalik Buterin, Nathan Schneider Narrated by Derek Shoales

Overview

After Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin dropped out of college and launched Bitcoin Magazine, he wrote the Ethereum white paper, which proposed an open source protocol that would take what Bitcoin did for money and do it for everything else: contracts, social networks, and sharing economies. Now, less than a decade later, his idea is valued at about half a trillion dollars, and it is the foundation for the weird new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate, and decentralized autonomous organizations.



This book is a collection of essays including "On Free Speech," which creates a whole new standard for free speech and how to protect it; "Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election," in which Buterin bets on the Trump-Biden election before and after it was decided, and how the prediction markets help explain the political situation today where so many believe Trump won; and the last essay in the book, "Crypto Cities," where Buterin observes the beginnings already in motion of a future where cities governed through blockchain better serve the public good than governing political institutions do today.



Understanding and engaging with Buterin's ideas will be of growing importance as the consequences of his invention continue to unfold and inspire debate worldwide.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"With this book, Vitalik Buterin establishes himself as the full-stack philosopher of our age — with enormous insight  in political philosophy, economics, game theory, organizational design and, oh yes, technology. If you believe, as I do, that web 3 has the potential to deliver enormous justice and good, this is an essential text. If you don’t understand what that potential could even mean, then this is an essential text. To find such wisdom in this critical field is a relief — and joy." 
—Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons co-founder, Harvard Law School professor, and author of The Future of Ideas: the Fate of the Commons In a Connected World

"Vitalik Buterin is unique in his robust, technical, and perspicacious approach to good intentions. He is one of the principal 'good guys' in the epochal, if uncertain, emergence of a world-to-come in which digital networks become as useful as they ought to be. This book is nerdy on the surface, but read with an open mind it is dramatic. It’s about the quest to figure out how the world can be better. There is no greater game and nothing more suspenseful or more filled with love."
—Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and author of You Are Not a Gadget

"Over the last decade, Buterin has become arguably the core public intellectual on the nonfinancial side of crypto. His new book, “Proof of Stake,” is a collection of long, thoughtful essays that taken together lay out a vision of crypto as a truly transformative technology — one with the potential to revolutionize everything from city governance to voting systems to online identity."
—Ezra Klein, New York Times podcast "Ezra Klein Show"

"Vitalik Buterin is one of the most influential creators of our generation primarily thanks to Ethereum, of course, but also because of his written work, which until now, has come in the form of white papers, blog posts, and tweets. But here we have the privilege of reading Vitalik's first book! Like most of his work, it is sure to become a must-read in the cryptocurrency space, as it dives into the heart of Ethereum—its consensus mechanism—which will be key to understanding the heart of the internet itself as web3 grows."
—Camila Russo, author of The Infinite Machine, founder of The Defiant

"Vitalik Buterin is one of the most important thinkers in crypto. His creation, Ethereum, has been the platform that launched nearly all of the big crypto trends of the last several years. He is also one of the field’s clearest communicators, which is why this compendium of his writing is a crucial contribution to development of a new technology that will impact all of our lives."
—Laura Shin, host of the Unchained podcast and author of The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze

“Vitalik Buterin is not only a great innovator, he is also a great and important thinker. The essays collected in this book prove that, and so many of them have more real substance than entire books by many other people.” 
—Tyler Cowen, Professor of economics, George Mason University

"I’ve never been more excited about the potential of the Internet, and that’s largely thanks to Vitalik Buterin."
—Alexis Ohanian(co-founder, Reddit), TIME  

"[Vitalik] Buterin is an extremely thorough and complex thinker: He’s trying to solve both problems that exist today and those that might exist in 20 years, with regards to privacy, housing, city planning, voting systems, and much more. And he’s still only 28, and growing into his role as a public figure. To me, it seems highly likely that this story only marks the start—as opposed to the peak—of his influence on the world."
—Andrew R. Chow on his March 2022 TIME cover profile of Vitalik Buterin

"Vitalik Buterin, creator of the fast-growing new cryptocurrency network Ethereum, wants to use his technology to disrupt, well, everything."
—Fortune

"[Vitalik Buterin's] vision has become a rallying cry. . . a technological crusade for increased access, transparency, and accountability. . . . A new economy in which anyone can participate on their own terms." —Wired

 “I saw him on the commuter train and he was wearing mismatched Hello Kitty socks. . . . And this is the person building the infrastructure that is challenging the power structures of the most important financial institutions out there.” —Wired
 
"An indispensable voice of authority with a great talent for untangling and explaining the technicalities of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies." —Wired

Kirkus Reviews

2022-08-11
A wonky excursion into the world of cryptocurrency and computer-generated governance.

Bitcoin uses an elaborate set of algorithms to provide “proof of work,” showing that a computer has been active in its role of “mining” digital coinage. Ethereum, founded by Buterin (b. 1994), aims for “proof of stake”—i.e., that participants in its digital realm demonstrate their legitimacy by virtue of their holdings alone, buying and selling them ethically without trying to game the system. In this collection of writings, mostly blog posts and talks, the famed billionaire who sleeps on other people’s couches takes on heady matters: the nature of the blockchain mechanism that safeguards crypto transactions and that may have broader uses as furthering a “way to pool together our money and support public projects that help create the society we want to see”; the seigniorage aspect of cryptocurrency; the extensibility of crypto techniques to develop decentralized business agreements and contracts. Blockchains, the be-all and end-all in some cryptolibertarian systems, are in Buterin’s eyes merely convenient means to ends, “simply marginally better than the next available tool for the job.” Nevertheless, they have allowed the author to reimagine Ethereum as not just a marketplace, but a platform for social change: more equitable justice provided by a kind of open-source judiciary, a means of decentralizing power to put it into the hands (and keyboards) of ordinary people, not governments or corporations. Buterin is an earnest and decidedly technical writer; it helps to know mathematics, economics, and computer science to follow some of his denser arguments. Yet he has a playful side, too, as when he unveils a game called 1.58-dimensional chess,” so named “because the twenty-seven open squares are chosen according to a pattern based in the Sierpinski triangle.”

Numerate computer whizzes are the key audience, but there’s something for lesser mortals on most pages.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175105774
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	09/27/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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