The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has declared his solidarity with Virgil Griffith, the American citizen arrested for training on blockchain in North Korea.
On Dec 1 Vitalik shared a link of a blog post to start a petition in support of Griffith. The blog is penned down by blockchain firm CEO Enrico Talin.
In declaring his support, Vitalik disclosed a “conflict-of-interest” insofar as Griffith is a friend of his.
He also emphasized that the Ethereum Foundation had provided no assistance to his trip and was not affiliated with Griffith’s personal decision, one that, Buterin claims, “many counseled against.” He further added:
“Geopolitical open-mindedness is a *virtue*. It’s *admirable* to go to a group of people that one has been trained since childhood to believe is a Maximum Evil Enemy, and hear out what they have to say. The world would be better if more people on all sides did that.”
Vitalik further states that he does not believe Griffith gave the DPRK “any kind of real help in doing anything bad” having only purportedly delivered a presentation based on already publicly accessible, open-source software. “There was no weird hackery “advanced tutoring,” Vitalik further argues that “Virgil made no personal gain” from his visit.
Mixed Reactions From Crypto Community
Vitalik’s arguments met a mixed response on twitter with some pointing to Griffiths’ decision to travel to the DPRK despite been denied permission to do so by the State Department.
A contradiction was further made on Vitalik’s comments that whether open-source or not, sophisticated code requires considerable skill and proficiency to serve as the basis of successful implementation.
As previously reported, North Korea is reportedly developing its own cryptocurrency that would help evade international sanctions.
Source: Cointelegraph | Twitter | Image: Flickr
