Early Days of Ethereum

Lorenzo Patuzzo was a friend of Mihai Alisie and Roxana Sureanu who joined the early Ethereum team at the Spaceship House in Zug, Switzerland in early 2014. Listed as "carpenter" in the project's records, Lorenzo's contributions spanned both physical and creative work during a formative period.

The Spaceship House

When the Zug live-work space (or "holon") got under way, Lorenzo helped make it livable. As described in The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo:

"Mihai and Roxy's friend Lorenzo Patuzzo, the carpenter, built a wall to create an extra bedroom that, during the day, functioned as a family room where they would watch Game of Thrones."

Taylor Gerring later recalled Lorenzo's practical contributions:

"Lorenzo was maligned for being 'non-technical' but did things the rest of us wouldn't. Here, he was building walls to make a 4th room." — Taylor Gerring, Mar 7, 2022

Lorenzo also helped fix bicycles for the team and took care of various hands-on tasks that kept the Spaceship functioning.

Ethereum Logo

Lorenzo designed the Ethereum logo that is still used today. As described in Out of the Ether by Matthew Leising:

"Lorenzo was designing the Ethereum logo. Before they all arrived in Switzerland, Anthony D'Onofrio, aka Texture, had redesigned the Ethereum website and created a logo that combined two sigma symbols and looked somewhat like a diamond. Lorenzo took that as a starting point but wanted to create an image that better represented what he understood Ethereum was: an inclusive platform to be used by all humanity. It had to signal strength, but at the same time flexibility and transparency. The image of a pyramid started to form under his pencil and that evolved into an octahedron, which is two square pyramids joined at the base. The many facets of the shape suggested endless possibilities in the platform. The team later submitted the octahedron to their own logo competition, and it won the online vote."

Ether Allocation

Lorenzo's involvement in the pre-mine allocation became a notable point of tension. The early Ethereum contributors decided to apportion the 10% pre-mine equally among all people who worked each month, with the same monthly rate regardless of role. As The Infinite Machine recounts:

"In February, when Lorenzo worked full-time on building the wall in the Spaceship, he got the same allocation of ether as Gavin. To Gavin, the fact that he, one of Ethereum's main coders, was paid the same monthly rate as the carpenter would still rankle years later."

Gavin Wood later reflected:

"Everyone who was involved with the project – regardless of their capacity, skill set, talent, commitment, or productivity – was treated equally, to a fault. One guy who put up an interior wall in the house in Zug walked away with quite a decent drop of ether. It might be the most ever paid for a wall of its size."

In total, 86 people received pre-mined ether for their work on the project, "from Gavin Wood who was leading the code development to Lorenzo Patuzzo who built a wall in the Spaceship House."