Who is the creator of Ethereum?

Vitalik Buterin is the creator of Ethereum. He proposed Ethereum in a white paper in November 2013, describing a blockchain platform for decentralized applications and smart contracts rather than only digital payments.

Buterin publicly announced the project at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami in January 2014. Ethereum then gained a broader founding team, including Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, Joseph Lubin, Mihai Alisie, Amir Chetrit, and Jeffrey Wilcke. The network launched on 30 July 2015.

A common mix-up is calling one of the other early founders “the creator.” Gavin Wood wrote the Ethereum Yellow Paper and helped implement the first client, while Hoskinson was involved in the early organization before departing. Those contributions were important, but Buterin originated the Ethereum concept and wrote its initial proposal.

Ethereum’s design enabled programmable smart contracts and decentralized applications. That foundation later supported ecosystems such as decentralized finance, NFT markets, and fungible-token standards including ERC-20.