When Did Ethereum Launch and How Has It Evolved Over Time

Ethereum launched on July 30, 2015, as a decentralized platform for creating and deploying smart contracts.

The first Ethereum network was launched by a team led by Vitalik Buterin, a young programmer who had a vision for a decentralized platform.

The team consisted of many other talented individuals, including Gavin Wood, who would later become the lead developer of Polkadot.

Ethereum's initial coin offering (ICO) raised over $18 million in 2014, a significant amount for a cryptocurrency at the time.

Vitalik Buterin, a young programmer, introduced Ethereum in late 2013 with a vision to create a decentralized platform for executing smart contracts and dApps.

Buterin's idea was to leverage blockchain technology to develop decentralized applications, unlike Bitcoin, which was strictly created for financial use.

The project's introductory paper was published in late 2013 by Buterin, explaining the new technology's concept and its possible use cases.

Ethereum's development was backed by an ICO in 2014, where the project creators accepted over 18 million dollars in Bitcoins.

Related reading: Bit Coin in 2013

The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit foundation, was established in June 2014 to support the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform's development.

In July 2014, the project's ICO took place, collecting about 31,500 BTC, which corresponded to $18,450,000.

The first public testnet, Olympic, was launched in the spring of 2015, where users tested the network by spamming transactions and creating nodes.

For their efforts, users received bounties paid in ETH by the foundation.

The Olympic testnet was the last phase in the development of Ethereum before the launch of the basic network implementation – Frontier.

The Ethereum network officially went live on July 30, 2015, with the first block known as the “Frontier.”

For more insights, see: When Was the First Bitcoin Atm Installed

Ethereum's crowdfunding campaign in 2014 was a groundbreaking moment in the project's history. The team raised a whopping $18 million worth of Bitcoin to fund the project.

The campaign lasted for 42 days, from July 20 to September 2, 2014. Developers needed large funding to build the project, so they decided to raise capital from public investors through an initial coin offering (ICO).

The Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit organization, was established in June 2014 to manage the legal and marketing efforts of the ICO campaign. The Foundation created 60 million ether (ETH) for public sale.

The company sold 2,000 ether per Bitcoin (BTC) for the first two weeks of the ICO and 1,399 ETH per BTC for the remainder of the token sale event. This was a significant milestone in Ethereum's history.

Over 50 million tokens were sold within the first 14 days of the crowdfunding, and by the end of the campaign, the project raised a total of 31,531 BTC.

Ethereum's development was a gradual process that spanned several years.

The first Ethereum whitepaper was published in November 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year-old programmer at the time.

Ethereum's development was influenced by the Bitcoin protocol, but it aimed to be more flexible and adaptable.

The Ethereum project gained significant traction in 2014, with the establishment of the Ethereum Foundation and the launch of the Ethereum crowdsale.

The crowdsale raised over 31,000 Bitcoins, which is equivalent to around $18 million at the time.

Ethereum's development was further accelerated by the involvement of prominent developers, including Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin.

The Ethereum network was officially launched on July 30, 2015, marking a significant milestone in the project's history.

Ethereum's scalability issues started to surface in late 2017, with network congestion and high gas fees becoming major concerns. This led to the creation of off-chain scaling products like Polygon.

The DeFi boom of 2020 and 2021 only exacerbated the problem, with average users facing high gas fees and seeking cheaper alternatives like BNB Chain and Tron.

In 2020, Ethereum implemented an upgrade to transition from PoW to PoS, which is a more secure and energy-efficient consensus mechanism.

Broaden your view: Why Are Ethereum Fees so High

Ethereum's scalability issues began to surface in late 2017, with the network congestion caused by the popularity of the blockchain game CryptoKitties.

Transactions were taking longer to confirm, and gas fees were shooting through the roof, making it difficult for users to navigate the network.

The Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, described the concept of the Blockchain Trilemma, which states that a blockchain network can't have efficient levels of all three desirable features: security, decentralization, and scalability.

This meant that Ethereum had to compromise on one core feature to optimize for the other two.

The scaling issues on Ethereum created a market for off-chain scaling products like Polygon.

In 2020, the DeFi boom further exacerbated the problem, with high gas fees driving users to seek cheaper alternatives like BNB Chain and Tron.

To address these issues, Ethereum implemented an upgrade in December 2020, marking the start of its transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

The upgrade required 16,384 deposits of 32 staked ETH in the contract address before it was implemented.

Proof-of-Stake is a more secure and energy-efficient consensus mechanism than PoW, and it's better suited for implementing new scaling solutions.

The upgrade created a separate PoS chain called the Beacon Chain, which ran parallel to the Ethereum PoW Mainnet.

For your interest: Ethereum High Gas Fee Payment

The Ethereum Merge was a significant event in 2022, marking a major shift in the network's consensus mechanism. It happened on September 15, 2022, at block 15537393, when the "Paris" upgrade was implemented.

Over 13.4 million ETH coins were staked on the deposit contract at the time of the upgrade. This was a crucial milestone in the transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.

The Merge involved the joining of the existing execution layer of Ethereum with its new PoS consensus layer – the Beacon Chain. This change allowed the network to move away from proof-of-work (PoW) consensus.

Ethereum's PoW miners were affected by the Merge, and a separate chain called proof-of-work Ethereum (ETHW) was created to allow them to continue verifying blocks.

Ethereum's journey began in 2014 when a whitepaper was published by Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year-old programmer.

The whitepaper proposed the concept of a decentralized platform for building and executing smart contracts, which would later become the foundation of the Ethereum network.

Vitalik Buterin's vision for Ethereum was to create a platform that would allow developers to build decentralized applications, or dapps, without the need for intermediaries.

Ethereum's development was led by a team of experienced developers, including Gavin Wood, Jeffrey Wilcke, and Charles Hoskinson.

In 2015, the Ethereum Foundation was established to oversee the development and growth of the Ethereum network.

The Ethereum network officially launched on July 30, 2015, with the release of its mainnet.