As an Act of Support for Ukraine Vitalik Buterin Attends Kyiv Tech Summit

It was a closely guarded secret for security reasons that Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin was attending the Kyiv Tech Summit to show support for war-torn Ukraine.

It is not surprising that Buterin supports Ukraine. Ethereum's co-founder was born in Russia and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 to discuss Ethereum opportunities. Still, he has been critical of his homeland's government and war with Ukraine for years. However, his visit is noteworthy due to the timing: Ethereum's muchanticipated Merge was just days away at the time of the event.

As the closing speaker of the summit, Buterin commented, "I have closely followed the conflict in Ukraine since it started. The goal of my trip was to visit Ukraine and to let them know that there are a lot of people who are supportive of their cause and care about them." In addition to Buterin, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Kyiv unannounced. Blinken did not attend the Kyiv Tech Summit.

Thirty tech experts attended the wartime conference, including Buterin, and two government officials - Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation for IT Development, and Alex Bornyakov, Fedorov's deputy and the face of crypto use in Ukraine.

During the three-day hackathon, almost 50 projects were submitted by 500 hackers to support Ukrainian freedom fighters. Discussions included decentralized electoral voting, central banks issuing digital currencies, and the role of Web3 and blockchain in combating disinformation. A number of topics were discussed, including decentralized electoral voting, central banks issuing digital currencies, and the role of Web3 and blockchain in the fight against disinformation.

In addition to contributing heavily to the war effort in Ukraine, Buterin said he wanted to see what kind of projects Ukrainians were doing, what they were working on, and what kind of implications blockchain, Web3, and Ethereum would have in Ukraine.

Having Vitalik and important representatives from the Ministry of Digital Transformation join us on the ground was a real treat, said co-founder CJ Hetherington. "We are not simply holding a tech event here. We are part of a movement, a protest, and an embodiment of the unbreakable spirit of Ukraine."

Among the other speakers at the summit were Kiril Khomiakov, general manager of Binance Ukraine; Illia Polosukhin, cofounder of NEAR Protocol; and Pavlo Kartashov, director of the Ukrainian Startup Fund. —Crypto Weekly