Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin turns 32
Vitalik Buterin, who created Ethereum at age 19, celebrated his birthday on January 31. His father Dmitry marked the occasion with a social media post recalling late-night conversations about blockchain that turned into the Ethereum whitepaper.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, celebrated his 32nd birthday on Saturday as the blockchain he helped create approaches its 11th year of operation. Born January 31, 1994, over the past decade, Buterin has played a central role in shaping Ethereum’s evolution – from a 2013 whitepaper draft to the world’s second-largest blockchain by market capitalization.
The milestone was marked publicly by Vitalik’s father, Dmitry Buterin, who shared a personal reflection on X, recalling the family conversations that preceded Ethereum’s creation. In his post, Dmitry recalled the early days when a teenage Vitalik was writing for Bitcoin Magazine and the family discussions that eventually led to the Ethereum whitepaper.
Buterin published the Ethereum whitepaper in late 2013, at age 19, proposing a blockchain platform that could execute programmable “smart contracts” beyond Bitcoin’s payment-focused design. The network officially launched on July 30, 2015, after a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised over 31,000 BTC.
Today, Ethereum holds a market capitalization of roughly $300 billion, underpinning hundreds of thousands of daily transactions across DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and enterprise applications. The blockchain completed its transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake consensus in September 2022, a multi-year technical overhaul known as “The Merge” that Buterin championed despite intense community debate.
Buterin’s role has evolved from lead developer to a broader advisory and research position as Ethereum’s ecosystem has matured. In recent years, Buterin has focused on long-term scalability challenges, frequently discussing layer-2 networks and account abstraction through research posts, public talks, and community debates.
The Ethereum Foundation, where Buterin serves as a key figure, holds substantial ETH reserves and coordinates protocol development through a distributed network of core developers and research teams.
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