The butterfly effect is defined as, “the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.” In other words, incredibly small actions can become the reason for much more influential things happening down the road. Today, internet users have been uncovering how a nerf in World of Warcraft lead to the creation of the cryptocurrency Ethereum.
Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by a programmer named Vitalik Buterin. Crowdfunding was done to bring the project to life in 2014 before it went live on July 30th, 2015. Since then, it has become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies all over the world — it’s what people can use to bid on Lindsay Lohan’s NFT of her fursona. And it all started with a balancing decision for an MMO, according to Buterin’s official website.
“I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”
He goes on to describe finding bitcoin as his “ner purpose in life” in 2011, which lead to him writing for Bitcoin Weekly before co-founding Bitcoin Magazine. After those projects took up too much of his time, he decided to try something more.
“I went around the world, explored many crypto projects, and finally realized that they were all too concerned about specific applications and not being sufficiently general – hence the birth of Ethereum, which has been taking up my life ever since.”
With the extremely controversial nature of cryptocurrency due to its negative impacts on the environment, when this new information was uncovered, many were surprised and shocked how one of the most famous game franchises of all time could have lead to this happening.
Who knew World of Warcraft could have such a unique effect on the cryptocurrency marketplace?
