By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
Vitalik Buterin created an opinion poll trying to decide whether take an offer and join Google’s team or stay at Ethereum. The majority backs the second alternative.
Founder of the second largest cryptocurrency (Ethereum) – Vitalik Buterin has been recently approached by Google with a proposition to join the company and help the tech giant in their mysterious blockchain project. Buterin was quick to post the screenshot of the email and tweeted it on his official handle asking his followers, in a poll, whether he should be taking the job offer.
The screenshot revealed that a Google recruiter – Elizabeth Garcia has approached him in an email that states: “Hi Vitalik, I hope you are doing well and enjoying the weekend! […] Google make sense for you now or in the near future […].” In addition to the recruiter name, the screenshot also revealed information about the recruiter’s email address and her photo.
Along with the screenshot, Buterin had attached a poll asking his followers “Should I drop Ethereum and work for Google?” Before the poll was deleted, the poll had 2000 followers already voted, of which nearly 60% believed that he should not be taking the offer while the remaining 40% believed that he should join Google. One of the key reasons for Buterin to take down the tweet was because he failed to keep the recruiter’s details confidential.
Vitalik soon tweeted saying:
Too bad you can't quote tweet someone and add a poll.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 18, 2018
Vitalik’s final decision will certainly have a big impact on the entire Ethereum network as well as the crypto community. He is considered to be the face of Ethereum and the hope for many developers, so any decision to leave this project would significantly bring down the price of Ether tokens immediately.
In the past few months, Vitalik and his team have been working very hard trying to unlock several scalability issues with different solutions being worked out like Casper and Sharding, Proof-of-Stake protocol. Vitalik has been seen presenting on several conferences this year sharing his important thought and view about the future of blockchain and digital currencies and what steps need to be taken to bring them to the mainstream.
A Reddit users Fuyuki_Wataru commented on a post about Buterin’s Google-related tweet, where he wrote:
“[Buterin is] free to do what he wants […] honestly his talent is too large to be caged in, even when at a company at [sic] Google. If you’ve achieved this much at such a young age, I think life has more plans for you. Perhaps a good 1-2 month vacation might be better.”
Despite Google shut down all the cryptocurrency and ICO-related advertisements on its platforms earlier this year, the company has been repeatedly showing its positive attitude towards blockchain technology. It is reportedly working on its own blockchain projects that involve using the distributed digital ledger for third-parties to verify transactions. In addition, the company also confirmed to be working on a blockchain-based cloud operations platform.
“Like many new technologies, we have individuals in various teams exploring potential use of blockchain, but it’s too early for us to speculate about any possible uses or plans,” said Google’s spokesperson in a word with Business Insider this March.