ETH Community Celebrates Ethereum’s 9th Birthday

Ethereum leaders and community members have come together to reflect on the 9-year journey of Ethereum (ETH).

ETH Community Celebrates Ethereum’s 9th Birthday. Image: CoinDesk

On July 30, 2015, the first block was recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, marking the launch of the world’s second-largest blockchain network at that time.

Over the years, Ethereum has weathered numerous challenges and has grown from its early steps to become one of the most resilient pillars of the crypto industry. It has been at the forefront of many trends that now define the sector, including fundraising, DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, memecoins, Layer-2 solutions, and Real World Assets.

Today, Ethereum remains a leader in many metrics, with a Total Value Locked (TVL) nearing $59 billion and $78.8 billion in circulating stablecoins. Ethereum is also home to over 1,100 protocols, with a 24-hour on-chain trading volume of $1.68 billion.

Comparing Ethereum with Other Leading Blockchains. Source: DefiLlama (31/07/2024)

The block explorer Etherscan has compiled some on-chain data about Ethereum after 9 years, including 2.45 billion transactions, 20.4 million blocks, 1 million validators, 277 million wallet addresses, 66.9 million smart contracts deployed, and 2 million data blobs.

On the occasion of Ethereum’s 9th anniversary on July 30, 2015, Ethereum’s notable leaders and community members shared their thoughts on the project's past, present, and future.

Vitalik Buterin, one of Ethereum’s prominent co-founders, revisited images of the early Ethereum developers waiting for the genesis block. Buterin, who authored Ethereum’s whitepaper in 2013 leading to the blockchain’s launch two years later, recently blogged about the evolution of Ethereum’s development strategies from the 2010s to the 2020s.

Lefteris Karapetsas, a developer featured in the historic photo, provided details about the individuals in the image, including:

• Christian - the creator of the Solidity programming language
• Gavin Wood - another Ethereum co-founder and later founder of Polkadot
• Vlad Gluchowski - brother of the ZkSync founder
• Vlad Zamfir - a leading researcher at the Ethereum Foundation

Meanwhile, the Ethereum Stories account shared interviews with founders of top Ethereum projects, where they recounted their journeys with Ethereum. The featured guests included:

• Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation
• Hayden Adams, Founder and CEO of Uniswap
• Kain Warwick, Founder of Synthetix
• Joseph Lubin, Founder of ConsenSys
• Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of Reddit
• Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO of Aave

Bitwise, a Wall Street asset management firm, also celebrated Ethereum’s 9th birthday with a post marking the milestone of their Ethereum spot ETF launch.

Justin Sun, founder of TRON, revealed that his birthday coincides with Ethereum’s, but was later caught using an AI-edited image for the celebration.