Ethereum turns 9 today, Vitalik Buterin says — though others might beg to differ

Tuesday, July 30, 2024, marks the ninth birthday of Ethereum ETH +0.42% , the second-largest blockchain by market capitalization, according to a post by network co-creator Vitalik Buterin. 

“Happy 9th birthday, Ethereum,” Buterin wrote on social media platform X, celebrating what is also known as “Launch Day.” “Looking forward to seeing what the next decade brings.”

Blockchains traditionally have two founding dates — the day the whitepaper is published and the day the network is officially launched — which can often make celebrating anniversaries controversial. This process is made all the more complex if a network, like Ethereum, is funded by an initial coin offering, which would represent the date the native token went live.

“Today is definitively Ethereum’s actual birthday. It is the day in 2015 when the network launched and the first block was mined. The celebration of the ICO event is a confusing fad and hopefully, one that falls out of fashion quickly,” University of Dublin lecturer Paul Dylan-Ennis, author of the “Absolute Essentials of Ethereum,” told The Block in an interview.

Beginning with the creation of Bitcoin, historians, supporters and onlookers have turned towards the dates a blockchain’s whitepaper was published and Genesis block was mined or validated (Oct. 31, 2008 for Bitcoin and Jan. 3, 2009, respectively, for Bitcoin), Dylan-Ennis added.

But things are a little more confusing for Ethereum. Sometimes blockchain historians will even point to a date in 2013 when it is said Buterin first conceived of a general-purpose blockchain built for decentralized applications.

It’s even more sticky when considering that, in the first few months, there were many different versions of the Ethereum whitepaper. According to a GitHub post looking to determine the “canonical white paper,” there were at least two initial drafts often cited by academics — one sent to potential early contributors in 2013 and a more reader-friendly version published in 2014.

“I personally say November 27, 2013, because that is when Vitalik sends the earliest version of the whitepaper to people he thinks will work on it,” Dylan-Ennis said. That is “the analog to Satoshi posting to the Cypherpunk mailing list … [but] 2014 is the correct *citation* date strictly in terms of publication on GitHub.”

Then there is the question of when Buterin, who had made further changes to the document after publication, said it was finalized: Dec. 10, 2014 . Curiously enough, other people continued to add to the “final” version of the whitepaper even after that date, unlike the Bitcoin whitepaper published by Satoshi Nakamoto, which has remained static.

Despite all these possible considerations, it appears many in the Ethereum community agree that today represents the network’s real anniversary. 

“Ethereum's birthday is the day the first block was mined. Conception dates are just people bragging about having sex,” Nomad co-founder and Chief Technology Officer James Prestwich told The Block.

On this date nine years ago, some of the earliest contributors, including Gavin Wood, Vlad Zamfir and Lefteris Karapetsas, among a smattering of others, gathered in a small office in Berlin to watch the first block go live.