{"id":39251,"date":"2023-03-21T02:44:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T01:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.coinpro.ch\/glossar\/vitalik-buterin\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T09:25:50","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T07:25:50","slug":"vitalik-buterin","status":"publish","type":"encyclopedia","link":"https:\/\/www.coinpro.ch\/en\/glossary\/vitalik-buterin\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitalik Buterin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vitalik Buterin is one of the best-known figures in the blockchain<\/a> scene. As the founder of Ethereum<\/a>, he has created one of the most successful smart contract platforms<\/a>, which allows developers to create decentralized applications<\/a> on the Ethereum blockchain. Buterin has also helped to promote understanding of blockchain technology and to highlight many of the challenges facing the industry. <\/span><\/p>\n

Vitalik Buterin was born in Russia on January 31, 1994, and moved to Canada with his family at the age of six. He became interested in mathematics and computer science at an early age, and at the age of 17 he published his first article on Bitcoin<\/a>. In 2013, he met Bitcoin enthusiast and entrepreneur Mihai Alisie and together they founded the Bitcoin Magazine website. This site quickly became one of the most important sources of information about cryptocurrencies<\/a> and blockchain technology. <\/span><\/p>\n

Founding of Ethereum<\/h2>\n

Buterin’s groundbreaking breakthrough came in 2014, when he developed the idea for Ethereum<\/b>. He wanted to create a platform where developers could create smart contracts that can be executed on the Ethereum blockchain. A smart contract is a self-executing code that executes itself, provided a specific event has occurred or a specific condition is met. This can range from making a payment to executing complex business processes. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Ethereum network was launched in July 2015 and quickly grew into one of the fastest growing and most important projects in the blockchain space<\/b>. In 2016, the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)<\/a> was introduced on the Ethereum platform, which served as one of the first examples of the use of smart contracts. However, there was also a serious problem when a flaw in the DAO’s code was exploited and a large portion of the cryptocurrencies were stolen. <\/span>These events led to a so-called \u201chard fork<\/a>\u201d of the Ethereum blockchain, which is now known as Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.<\/b><\/p>\n