Buterin Vitalik's new documentary, Vitalik: An Ethereum story begins streaming onchain

After working three years on his documentary, Vitalik Buterin is finally ready to give us a glimpse of his personal life through his new documentary, "Vitalik:An Ethereum Story", which offers an intimate look at Buterin and Ethereum community's fight for an open internet last Friday.

The making of the documentary started in 2021 after the documentary completed the largest crowdfund in documentary history, raising 1,036 ETH (currently worth $2.6 million) to go towards its production budget. The film was released theatrically on Wednesday in 23 countries and was sponsored by the Ethereum Layer 2 Base.

For the first time ever in movie history, this film would allow onchain minting of its trailer, allowing crypto users to help fund the decentralized distribution release of the film across theaters across the globe and on streaming platforms.

The insider scoop of how Buterin made Ethereum

The movie will preview close insights from not just Buterin alone, but Buterin's parents, other artists and tech experts like Dmitry Buterin Danny Ryan, Itzel Yard and Tim O'Reilly. The movie would also give us a glimpse into Buterin's childhood and recount through interview and archival footage why and how he helped build and launch Ethereum.

The film will be available online through a token-gated website at Ethereumfilm.xyz for 30 days and will be available on major streaming platforms in 2025.

The film was directed by Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple and produced by Carrie Weprin and Jenna Kelly. It was produced by Optimist and Strange Design, in association with Lone Palm Productions, Big Beach and TIME Studios.

Carrie Weprin expressed that they are proud to be partnering with Base, and Ox | Matcha; for the first time ever, this film is controlled by people instead of big distributors. She also adds that for the longest time, distribution has long been controlled by a handful of powerful intermediaries, leaving creators little control over their work's reach and monetization.

Through this film, members of the crypto community get to learn about the blockchain through the eyes of the people "most committed to keeping it vibrant and infinitely evolving". The documentary captured the significant events that have shaken the crypto world such as the 2021 NFT boom, the rise and fall of different blockchains and exchanges such as the TerraLUNA blockchain and the fall of FTX.

Ethereum celebrates its controversial birthday

The world's second-largest blockchain recently celebrated its ninth birthday on the 30th July 2024, according to a post by Network co-creator Vitalik Buterin.

On X, Buterin wrote "Happy 9th birthday, Ethereum", celebrating what is also known as "Launch Day."

Birthdays of a project is often a controversial topic, given that blockchains traditionally have two founding dates - the day the whitepaper is published and the day the network is officially launched.

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.

But University of Dublin lecturer Paul Dylan-Ennis, author of the "Absolute Essential of Ethereum," backed Buterin's claim and purports that the 30th of July is indeed Ethereum's birthday. He backed up his claims by saying that that was also the day the network was launched and the first block was mined.