Vitalik Buterin Tweets ETH Development Proposals After Elon Musk's 'Ethereum' Tweet Bait

Technology entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sparked a conversation with ether co-founder Vitalik Buterin with his laconic one-word tweet "Ethereum" on April 29.

The tweet, which Musk swiftly ironized by adding "Jk" within the same thread, prompted Buterin to extend an invitation to Musk for Ethereum's DevCon in October.

In response, Musk asked Buterin the question, "What should be developed on Ethereum?".

Erin also proposed the creation of registries and certificates that would be digitally signed, certified and even revoked on-chain - which Buterin had previously pitched as part of a self-described tweetstorm on non-financial applications for blockchain in December 2018.

He further referred to the use of the ETH blockchain for "Experimenting with new forms of human organizational structure," and to enable micropayment use cases via ETH payment channels.

Other proposals from Buterin included crypto-powered "Markets for personal data for privacy preserving machine learning," and using "Cryptoeconomics for spam prevention in social networks."

In contrast with Buterin's lengthy engagement with Musk's lead-in, other blockchain creators - such as Tron Foundation CEO Justin Sun - responded in kind, with their own one-word quips.

Musk only briefly re-engaged in the conversation with an allusion to Buterin's official Twitter handle, "Vitalik Non-giver of Ether," cajoling Vitalik to "Stop giving away free ETH!".

EToro analyst Mati Greenspan meanwhile speculated that Musk's single tweeted word had allegedly prompted a mini spike in Ethereum's price.

As previously reported, Musk has praised bitcoin's structure as being "Quite brilliant," yet underscored the problematic energy intensivity of mining the coin.