ETH 10th Anniversary: ​​From ICO to Ethereum spot ETF listing, a review of major milestones

This site (120bTC.coM): It has been 10 years since Ethereum launched its ICO on July 22, 2014. At that time, 1 BTC could be exchanged for 2,000 ETH, but now it can only be exchanged for less than 20 ETH.

Today, Ethereum has become the second largest cryptocurrency in the world by market value, second only to Bitcoin, with a market value of US$417.597 billion. It is also the largest smart contract platform.

The growth of Ethereum is beyond imagination, and now it will be officially listed at the opening of US stocks this evening (23rd). This marks another milestone for cryptocurrencies and reflects the widespread acceptance and increasingly mature regulatory environment surrounding crypto-assets.

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said on X that ETH has now been widely recognized as a digital commodity, and the journey of institutional investors has officially begun: ETH is regarded as the currency of the block space. Since EIP-1559, 4.3 million ETH have been burned to pay for gas. In the future, it is expected that millions more ETH will be burned for payment blobs. Through staking, ETH provides $100 billion in economic security for the Ethereum network, a number that is 10 times that of Bitcoin. In addition, ETH is also an ideal collateral asset in DeFi and re-hypothecation activities, thus unlocking huge economic potential for the value network.

Next, we will review the evolution of Ethereum in the past ten years.

The past and present life of Ethereum

The birth of Ethereum stems from the vision of a young genius. In 2013, Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year-old Russian-Canadian engineer at the time, conceived this revolutionary idea. As a Bitcoin enthusiast and developer, Buterin is aware of Bitcoin's limitations in executing complex smart contracts. To realize his vision, Buterin published the Ethereum white paper at the end of 2013, outlining a decentralized platform that can run smart contracts.

Buterin’s interest in decentralized systems, which eventually led to the creation of Ethereum, can be traced back to his early love for World of Warcraft. Buterin was deeply involved in the game until game developer Blizzard changed the skill settings of his favorite characters in 2009. This action made him realize the horrors of centralized services, which inspired him to create The desire for a platform that is decentralized, cannot be modified arbitrarily, and is maintained by the community.

After publishing the Ethereum white paper, Buterin united a group of like-minded people, including Gavin Wood (creator of Solidity), Charles Hoskinson (later left Ethereum to found Cardano), Joseph Lubin (later founded ConsenSys) and Anthony DiIorio, etc. people, jointly became the co-founders of Ethereum.

On July 22, 2014, Ethereum officially launched ICO financing. They raised funds through pre-sale of ETH at that time. The exchange ratio was 1 Bitcoin for 2,000 Ethereum. It was not until September 22 of that year that Ethereum succeeded. 31,591 Bitcoins were raised, with a market capitalization of $18.4 million at the time.

After an intensive development phase, the Ethereum mainnet was officially launched on July 30, 2015, marking the birth of the first blockchain platform to support smart contracts. This has brought new possibilities to blockchain technology, making it quickly become the platform of choice for developers and spawning a large number of innovative projects. The ICO boom in 2017 made Ethereum famous and further consolidated its leading position.

Over time, Ethereum has developed into the largest blockchain platform besides Bitcoin, supporting a huge development community and numerous innovative projects.

Major upgrades of Ethereum in the past 10 years

The initial version of Ethereum launched in 2015 was called Frontier. Since its launch, it has undergone multiple major upgrades. These upgrades include:

• Homestead (2016): Ethereum’s first major upgrade, adding several important technical and protocol improvements, such as EIP-2, EIP-7, and EIP-8, improving the network security and stability.

• DAOFork (2016): This is not a planned upgrade, but a hard fork in response to TheDAO attack. This fork aims to restore the funds stolen from TheDAO due to contract vulnerabilities.

• Byzantium Hard Fork (Byzantium, 2017): Introducing zk-SNARKs zero-knowledge proof technology and improving network throughput

• Constantinople Hard Fork (Constantinople, 2019): Reduced The gas consumption of smart contracts adjusts the mining difficulty and prepares for the subsequent transition to proof of stake by delaying the so-called "difficulty bomb (also known as the Ice Age)".

• Beacon Chain Genesis Block (2020): The Beacon Chain started producing blocks on December 1, 2020

• London Hard Fork (London, August 2021): Introducing EIP- 1559, Ethereum’s gas fee mechanism was reformed, and a base fee and burning mechanism were introduced, aiming to make fee prediction easier and reduce network congestion.

• The Merge (September 2022): Converting the Ethereum mainnet from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), significantly reducing energy consumption and improving its scalability and security.

• Shanghai + Capella Upgrade (Shapella, April 2023): Allows stakers to withdraw their previously locked ether.

• Naik taraf Deneb + ​​​​Cancun (Dencun, Mac 2024): Memperkenalkan jenis transaksi baharu (gumpalan) dan mengurangkan yuran Ethereum L2.

Dengan pelancaran rasmi Ethereum spot ETF, diharapkan Ethereum akan berkembang dengan lebih cergas dan terus menerajui kemajuan blockchain dan cryptocurrency.

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