Known today as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum has experienced many significant milestones since its founding in 2015. The Ethereum blockchain has gone through many pivots and transformations before finally being acknowledged as the decentralized blockchain, a platform where anybody could create their own cryptocurrency using the ERC-20 framework.
2014: Ethereum’s pivotal whitepaper is created
In 2014, Vitalik Buterin published a paper titled “Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform”. In the paper, he explains the concept of Bitcoin and envisions a completely new version of the blockchain, which would include expanded use cases in on-chain blockchain escrow, financial contracts, and P2P gambling.
2015: Ethereum blockchain officially launches, surges in popularity
The Ethereum network officially went live on July 30, 2015, and was trading at a price of $2.79 on August 8, 2015, according to CoinMarketCap.com. A year later, the Ethereum blockchain faced controversy for a DAO hack, which disrupted the network, stealing over 3.6 million ETH, valued today at $13.7 billion.
2021: ETH reaches all-time highs
During the crypto bull run in 2020-21, major blue-chip cryptocurrencies experienced a massive rally. Ethereum touched an all-time high of $4,878 in November 2021. Multiple factors drove the bull run for ETH, including mass-scale institutional adoption, widespread interest in NFTs, the popularization of DeFi, and other key factors.
2022: Merge Upgrade
Ethereum went through a critical transformation 7 years later, transitioning from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, reducing energy costs to the network by 99%. In a bid to become more energy efficient, Ethereum opted for a method of network validation for verifying transactions, instead of creating new blocks through the solving of Algorithmic puzzles. This was done by joining Ethereum’s main execution layer to a new consensus layer, known as the Beacon Chain.
2025: Ethereum Foundation leadership shuffle, current outlook with stablecoin legislation
Latest updates to the Ethereum Foundation include a reorganization of the leadership ranks. The non-profit organization hired two new co-directors, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak. With the GENIUS Act now recently passed into law, Ethereum is poised to capture more growth from institutional investors as most of the stablecoins have been launched on its blockchain.