The eight Ethereum co-founders fracture at a Zug meeting before the project has shipped a line of production code

JUN 07 2014 · 12:05

Video: Code, Chaos & Consensus: The Story of Vitalik Buterin & The 8 Founders Who Changed Crypto Forever Date: 2014-06-07 · Type: ethereum · Hub: zug · Tags: ethereum, founding, co-founders, zug, hoskinson, lubin, wood, schism The fragmentation was, in retrospect, productive — many of the chains that competed with Ethereum grew from this single broken table. The Ethereum founders are conventionally listed as eight: Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Amir Chetrit, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke. The number is already an artifact of a particular moment — some arrived earlier, some later, and the boundaries of 'founding' were contested even at the time. What is not contested is the meeting of June 7 2014, at the Spaceship House in Zug, where Hoskinson and Chetrit were pushed out. The proximate cause was a structural dispute: Hoskinson and Di Iorio wanted a for-profit company; Buterin, Wood, and Alisie wanted a Swiss non-profit foundation, in part because it was a cleaner legal structure for a token sale, and in part because Buterin was genuinely committed to the idea that Ethereum's development should not be beholden to equity investors. Hoskinson's removal was abrupt enough that he has described it bitterly in subsequent interviews; Chetrit has been more circumspect. The two were effectively separated from the project weeks before the Foundation was formally registered. What came after the fracture is worth tracing. Hoskinson founded IOHK and Cardano — a more academically rigorous, peer-review-driven blockchain that has been a persistent competitor. Lubin founded ConsenSys in Brooklyn, the most important Ethereum application studio of the first decade. Wood co-founded Parity Technologies (the Rust client), then the Web3 Foundation and Polkadot — a project that explicitly offers a different answer to many of Ethereum's architectural choices. Di Iorio founded Decentral and Jaxx, then largely exited the space. Alisie continued with the Foundation, then built Akasha. Wilcke led the Go client (geth) until the mid-2020s. The table broke; the pieces kept moving. Facts • Eight co-founders: Buterin, Alisie, Di Iorio, Hoskinson, Chetrit, Lubin, Wood, Wilcke • June 7 2014 Zug meeting: Hoskinson and Chetrit removed from operational roles • Core dispute: for-profit company vs. Swiss non-profit foundation structure • Wood's Yellow Paper completed April 2014, before the split • Wilcke led Go client (geth); Wood led Rust/C++ clients (Parity) • Post-split ventures: Hoskinson → Cardano; Lubin → ConsenSys; Wood → Parity / Polkadot Primary Documents • Forbes: The Inside Story of Ethereum (Laura Shin, 2022) — https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2022/02/22/the-cryptopians-the-inside-story-of-ethereum/