The Ethereum blockchain was launched in 2015.
Ethereum’s official network launch took place on July 30, 2015, when the Frontier release created the blockchain’s genesis block. The project had been proposed earlier: Vitalik Buterin described the idea in a 2013 white paper, and development and fundraising followed in 2014.
Ethereum was built to support programmable smart contracts and decentralized applications, rather than focusing only on peer-to-peer payments. Ether, or ETH, is the platform’s native cryptocurrency and is used to pay for computation and transactions.
A common mix-up is treating 2013 or 2014 as the launch year. Those dates refer to Ethereum’s proposal and development period, not the live blockchain. Another major milestone came much later, in September 2022, when Ethereum switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake during an upgrade known as The Merge.