Vitalik Buterin is a well-known programmer and entrepreneur who is best known as the co-founder of Ethereum, a blockchain-based decentralized platform that allows developers to create decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts.

Born in Russia in 1994, Buterin grew up in Canada and developed an interest in programming at an early age. He attended the University of Waterloo but dropped out in 2014 to focus on developing Ethereum.

Buterin wrote the Ethereum white paper in 2013, which outlined the technical details and vision of the platform. Ethereum has since become one of the most popular blockchain-based platforms, with a wide range of use cases including finance, healthcare, gaming, and more.

Buterin has been recognized for his contributions to the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. In 2014, he was awarded the Thiel Fellowship, and in 2018 he was listed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for finance. He continues to work on Ethereum and is involved in various other projects and initiatives related to blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Here are some more notable developments by Vitalik Buterin:

Ethereum: Buterin is the co-founder and one of the lead developers of Ethereum, a blockchain platform that enables the creation of decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Ethereum is one of the most popular blockchain platforms, and has been used for a wide range of applications, from finance to gaming to supply chain management.

Proof of Stake: Buterin has been a vocal proponent of Proof of Stake (PoS) as an alternative to Proof of Work (PoW) as a consensus mechanism for blockchain networks. PoS is considered to be more energy-efficient and less resource-intensive than PoW, which requires miners to solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions on the network. 

Plasma: Buterin proposed the Plasma framework in 2017 as a way to increase the scalability and speed of Ethereum. Plasma is a layer 2 solution that enables the creation of "child chains" that can process transactions more quickly and with lower fees than the main Ethereum blockchain. Plasma is still under development, but has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of Ethereum.

Sharding: Buterin has also proposed sharding as a way to increase the scalability of blockchain networks. Sharding involves partitioning the blockchain into smaller "shards" that can process transactions in parallel, rather than having to process all transactions on a single chain. Ethereum is currently working on implementing sharding as part of its roadmap for increasing scalability.

Ethereum 2.0: Buterin is one of the main developers of the major Ethereum 2.0 update that was released in September 2022. Ethereum 2.0 is designed to address the scalability and security issues of the current Ethereum network and include features such as PoS, sharding, and other improvements to the core protocol.

Overall, Vitalik Buterin's contributions to the development of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology have been significant, and his ideas continue to shape the direction of the industry.