[INTERVIEW] with Tim Beiko “Ethereum, Universal Blockchain For Infinite Innovation”

The blockchain ecosystem is in its heyday. Behind the scenes is Ethereum, which has been pursuing change and innovation under the vision of a “universal network” that anyone can engage in.

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Ethereum developer Tim Beiko is considered one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency industry, contributing to Ethereum’s many milestones, including the implementation of large hardforks in 2021 and the introduction of Ethereum Improvement Plan(EIP).

Blockchain Magazine ‘BBR’ looked into the past and future of Ethereum through Tim Beiko’s story.

Q, Please introduce yourself and your company briefly. When and how did you enter the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain?

My name is Tim Beiko and I work at the Ethereum Foundation. There, I run what are called the “AllCoreDevs calls”. These calls are where protocol developers and researchers come together to propose, debate and implement changes to the Ethereum protocol.

I first heard about blockchain in 2013, when a friend of mine who was interested in several odd things told me about Bitcoin. It seemed like an interesting project so I bought some and began following the space. A few years later, that same friend told me about Ethereum. I didn’t pay attention to it at first, but then when I heard about TheDAO, a project which was aiming to build an on-chain VC fund, I got interested. I bought some ETH so I could contribute to TheDAO, which unfortunately got hacked shortly after!

The next few weeks were quite the introduction to blockchain: after TheDAO was hacked, there was a proposal for an emergency hard fork on Ethereum to recover the funds. The fork was agreed to by the community, but a subset of people were not happy and decided to revive the pre-fork chain under the name “Ethereum Classic”. This forced me to understand how blockchain forks work, how to safely store my coins on both chains, etc. while still being very new to the space.

After TheDAO, there wasn’t much activity on…