The Three Cs of Joseph Lubin: Construct, Contribute, ConsenSys

Canadian entrepreneur and software engineer Joseph Lubin helped spearhead the development of the open-source smart contract blockchain platform that came to be known as Ethereum.

As one of the wealthiest and most influential public figures in the industry, Lubin founded ConsenSys, a company that develops Ethereum-based products and tools to increase adoption of Ethereum applications around the world, taking the view that the decentralized future is already here - just unevenly distributed.

Lubin was among those who believed that the 2008 global financial crisis would plunge the global economy into an extended recession that would take "20+ years for the snake to digest this elephant of debt." Indeed, the crisis reportedly resulted in a decline in the net worth of American households by nearly $17 trillion in inflation-adjusted terms, as well as a doubled rate of unemployment, with about 7.5 million jobs lost between 2007 and 2009.Years later, in reference to the financial crisis of 2008, Lubin recalled: "Many people were disenchanted, disillusioned. So, when the Bitcoin white paper came along, it really captured the imagination of many people."

Joe Lubin meets EthereumLubin was already thoroughly familiar with blockchain technology by the time he came across Ethereum, a public, open-source, blockchain-based distributed computing platform designed to create decentralized applications.

Fascinated with the idea and purported opportunity to transform the existing financial system by removing the third party, Lubin continued exploring the space until he stumbled upon the first version of the Ethereum white paper in the beginning of 2014, written by 19-year-old Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin.

The further development of Ethereum was funded through an online crowdsale - which raised over $18 million - in the summer of 2014, for which Lubin and Ethereum's other co-founder, Anthony Di Iorio, reportedly provided up to 95% of the funding.

In 2014, Lubin also held the position of chief operating officer at Ethereum Switzerland GmbH, a company that supported the development of the Ethereum platform, and he co-founded the Ethereum Foundation, a Toronto-based nonprofit organization whose objective is to promote and support Ethereum platform and base layer research, among other things.

Not long after Lubin joined the Ethereum founding team, things became complicated.

That same year, Lubin and Buterin differed in their views concerning the motives and methods of carrying out business: Lubin saw the future of the project in the building of a commercial ecosystem around Ethereum, while Buterin continued to focus on the technology.

In December 2018, Lubin was rumored to have made significant cuts to the company's staff, letting go up to 50% to 60% of its workforce counting 1,200.Later, ConsenSys asserted that the staff cuts were a "Natural movement," mainly affected support employees, and did not exceed 13% of the company's headcount.