Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer best known as the co-founder of Ethereum, a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts. He co-founded Ethereum in 2013 at the age of 19, and has since played a leading role in its development. Buterin is also the co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, a publication focused on the cryptocurrency industry, and has written extensively on the potential applications of blockchain technology. In 2014, he was named one of the top 30 under 30 in Technology by Forbes.
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property.
Ethereum is the most well-known and widely used platform for running smart contracts. It is a decentralized platform that is powered by Ether, a cryptocurrency that acts as a fuel for the Ethereum network. Ethereum allows developers to build and deploy their own decentralized applications, or "dapps," on top of its blockchain. These dapps can be used for a wide variety of purposes, from enabling decentralized finance and prediction markets, to creating new kinds of digital organizations and online communities.
