History

Will be explaining the beginning of Ethereum and how it was founded, taking you through it's history from the very beginning to today and the possibilities that it brings.

Unlike Bitcoin which has a anonymous upbringing and creator, Ethereum was founded by a group of people. Out of this group of people a man named Vitalik Buterin was the one who eventually published the Ethereum Whitepaper that explained the concept and ideas behind Ethereum in November of 2013. After it's release other people came together to work to make the Whitepaper a reality. Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Amir Chetrit, Anthony Di lorio, Jeffrey Wilcke, Joseph Lubin and Mihai and Alisie and all considered the co founders of Ethereum. and were the first to see and consider the full potential that Ethereum offered, more than just being a secure virtual payment method.

Early years of Ethereum

The blockchain project first started to gain public attention after a Bitcoin conference in Miami Florida in early 2014, later that same year the project raised capital using an Initial coin offering (ICO). Where they sold millions of dollars worth of ETH coins in exchange for funds to use for the development of the project. During July and early September 2014 the asset sold over $18 million worth of ETH, paid for in Bitcoin. But even though users were able to purchase coins in 2014, the Ethereum blockchain did not go live until July 30, 2015. Which means that the users who already acquired ETH had to wait for the launch in order to use or move their ETH.

Even though the launch of Ethereum was in 2015 the development and progression was a long process that lasted many years. Frontier, which was the first iteration of the Ethereum blockchain simply just got the chain up and running, that included hosting smart-contract and proof-of-work mining. With the initial launch gave users the opportunity to set up their mining apparatuses and begin to build on the network. But ever since the launch of Ethereum, the blockchain itself has been through many other updates helping with it's progression. for example updates like Byzantium, Constantinople these two updates brought many different changes to the Ethereum blockchain which includes a mining payout reduction from five ETH down to three. Also the Beacon Chain which launched the transition of the blockchain to Ethereum 2.0(ETH2). Also a change from proof-of-work(POW) to a proof-of-stake(POS) consensus mechanism. With each of these updates has had a part in altering certain parts of the blockchain.

Ethereum significant changes/progression

One of the significant changes to Ethereum was the switch over to POS from POW to scale the blockchain. A number of projects have built applications on the Ethereum blockchain over the years since it's release. The network still had trouble when traffic started to hit a certain point.

Another change that started getting attention was in 2020 ans 2021 was the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects. They began to bring attention to Ethereum's scalability issues as high network fees were giving users a hard time. So with Ethereum's transition to ETH2 and PoS it is attempting to give the user a better experience, even though this transition will come in stages.

Of course some of these updates were originally part of Ethereum's progression but there were some that were added for changes along the way based on a number of different factors and events that resulted in changes in the blockchain. For example the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) fork, which purpose was to avoid a hack.

DAO's are a general concept in the crypto industry, whereas The DAO was a specific DAO from the crypto industries early days.

The Future of Ethereum

Ethereum being one of the first cryptocurrencies, males it one of the biggest players in the crypto world. You can tell this by many reasons like it's market capitalization and the extensive amount of solutions that these entities have built and are still building on the Ethereum blockchain.

As of mid 2022 supposed price continues to stay steady after the networks developers announced a tentative date for it's massive software update, which is now scheduled for a September 19 release. Investors and the developers are calling the upgrade "the Merge" and it is supposed to change how transactions on Ethereum are ordered, making it more efficient and sustainable for widespread use. But until this update take place the experts are waiting and watching to see what the investors and companies that are currently building their tech on Ethereums platform will respond to the changes.

Ethereum has been under performing Bitcoin so far in 2022 and some experts say this may be due to the building anticipation from the networks transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake and also a broader market retreat from risky assets.

The crypto market crashed in June 2022 after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, resulting in crypto companies announcing layoffs and freezing withdrawals and it continues to face regulatory challenges. Experts say that the market is also reflecting heightened volatility that comes along with war, continued surging inflation and a shifting U.S. monetary policy. Other factors that some experts are pointing to are the crypto market tracking the stock market, more mainstream adoption and lower prices in recent months as contributors to what we are seeing with the crypto prices right now. With government officials starting to show an interest in even more crypto regulations and even the possibility of creating a government-issued digital currency.

As it transitions over to ETH2 we will have to wait and see regarding the results as the transition is expected to take some time to show fully show the results.