Five Years of Ethereum: From a Teenage Dream to a $38B Blockchain

[Goodcat49]

How far has the Ethereum blockchain come in the five years since its inception? We explore key developments, changes and challenges.

It would seem that five years is a relatively short time for an information technology company, but Ethereum has made colossal progress during this time, growing from its own initial coin offering project to the largest blockchain platform, running about 2,000 decentralized applications. Today, the market capitalization of its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), is worth $38 billion — larger than Ford Motor Company and the popular app Snapchat. Not only that, but the value of Ether has seen a 121-fold increase over the period of the network’s existence.

While the whole team is preparing for the transition to the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm ahead of the upcoming Berlin upgrade, Cointelegraph recalls the striking changes that have occurred to the platform over the five years since its launch, and the failures that have only toughened its resolve.

2013/2014: An idea to an $18 million crowdsale
Ethereum was invented by Vitalik Buterin, a Canadian programmer of Russian descent. It was 2013, and Buterin was just an 18-year-old teenager, but his idea found a lively response in the global blockchain community. Later, Gavin Wood, a British computer programmer, proved the possibility of creating the system invented by Buterin and described the basic principles of its operation in the Ethereum “Yellow Paper.” Together with the first members of the Ethereum team, they launched a crowdsale and raised $18 million for the project’s development.

2015: Network launch and exchange listing
The first version of the Ethereum cryptocurrency protocol, called Frontier, was launched on July 30, 2015. But the security level the system boasted back then was far from what Ethereum is today. The launch of Frontier marked an important milestone in the history of the network, after which the developers immediately started working with smart contracts and creating DApps on the real blockchain.

The first existing historical record of Ether’s price is from Aug. 7, 2015, when ETH was added to the Kraken crypto exchange at $2.77 per coin. Over its first three days of trading, its price dropped to a demeaning $0.68, most likely under the influence of rapid sales by early investors.

In the second half of the year, droves of crypto enthusiasts rushed to learn what they could about Ethereum. A particularly significant contribution to its popularization was made by the DEVCON-1 developer conference, which was held from Nov. 9 to 13. The event sparked intense discussions on the development of Ethereum, with the participation of representatives from IBM, Microsoft and UBS.

More: https://cointelegraph.com/news/five-years-of-ethereum-from-a-teenage-dream-to-a-38b-blockchain

[TomPluz]

Ethereum is a great success story telling us that young people have this prominent role to play and can contribute a lot in the development of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. I could not actually imagine that Ethereum was started by an 18-year-old young man and will be as it is today, second only to Bitcoin in terms of size, growth, marketcap and influence.