Since its inception, Ethereum has proved itself the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world in many ways. But do you know the journey of Ethereum 2.0 from 0? Do you know the history behind the Ethereum Blockchain development?
As we said, Ethereum is the second-largest crypto in terms of market capitalization. It is now accounting for 18% of the crypto market. The success of Ethereum cannot be described well if we do not look into its journey. Hence, have a look.
The inception of Ethereum
Ethereum is the idea of Vitalik Buterin, who sowed the seeds of this cryptocurrency in 2013 at the age of 19. After that, he came up with the publication of a white paper that described Ethereum as a next-generation smart contract and a platform of decentralized application. This marks the beginning of the journey of Ethereum.
Pre-launch period of Ethereum
Bitcoin has a great influence on Ethereum development. Bitcoin has established the initial foundation for the technology of the decentralized blockchain.
However, the functionality of bitcoin has limitations up to the peer-to-peer electronic transfer of cash. After observing this limitation, Buterin thought of expanding its functionalities to furthermore programmable apps.
First of all, he wanted to succeed in his goal with the addition of an advanced form of scripting language. Also, he wanted bitcoin to enable its smart contract processing. However, the community of bitcoin has rejected this idea.
This has inspired Buterin to come up with a new kind of blockchain that will enable the world of computers.
In 2013, Buterin published a white paper outlining his idea of Ethereum. In 2014, he finally announced Ethereum at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami. His idea has attracted many developers like Gavin Wood, who further published the famous Yellow Paper with the technical implementation for Ethereum2.
At the end of 2014, Ethereum gained its crowdfunding which has raised more than $18 million with the selling of a native token, called Ether. The founders, along with the developers of Ethereum, have hosted the first conference, DEVCON0, during which the developers got introduced to each other for the first time.
Execution of Ethereum
Ethereum application development took place with the planning in four main stages. Each of its stages represents a system-oriented upgrade for the network where the previous versions are not supported any longer. These are also called “hard forks.”
Within all the main stages, there are both planned and not-pre-planned sub-upgrades.
Frontier phase: July 30, 2015 — March 14, 2016 — The implementation of the basic technical foundation
To facilitate seamless Ethereum Blockchain solutions to industries, the initial version of Ethereum 1.0 was published on July 30, 2015, called Frontier. This came up with two of its most basic foundations. It has enabled the users to mine the native token Ether and go up smart contracts.
The beginning stage started with the purpose of starting the network so that it can help the miners to set up the mining process and to let the developers test the form of decentralized application.
A minor kind of fork with the name of Frontier Thawing took place during which the gas had a limitation to 5000 for each transaction to make sure the pricing was not much high.
Homestead Phase: March 14, 2016 — October 16, 2017 — The improvement of infrastructure to address all the security issues
Homestead is a much safer version of Frontier. The DAO hack has brought about the security vulnerability of Ethereum under the light. Thus, DAO came in the form of an innovative idea that allowed users to crowdsource their funds. However, this has failed badly due to bugs in the contract code. Hackers have used it to steal some funding.
It has resulted in a talked-about decision for the implementation of a hard fork on the network of Ethereum to return the funds which got stolen.
However, after suffering some of the DoS attacks, two of the sub-upgrades came to the surface, Tangerine Whistle and the Spurious Dragon.
Metropolis Phase: October 16, 2017 — January 2, 2020 — Challenge solving that came up with growth and expansion
Metropolis came as a much comprehensive improvement for the security of Ethereum crypto solutions. It further delivered privacy along with better scalability. It has solved many problems that Ethereum continued to face during its process of scaling and has further brought a lighter and more effective experience for both users and developers.
As the update was very complicated, it came up with two steps called the Byzantium and Constantinople.
Serenity Phase: January 2, 2020–2022 — Better security, scalability, and sustainability of Ethereum 2.0
The stage of Serenity is still under development. Known as Ethereum 2.0, this new version will advance the level which can be used broadly.
Ethereum wallet development is intended to solve 2 major challenges — dealing with clogged networks that can handle only limited transactions and the larger energy consumption, which comes with poor work mechanisms.
Two of the major upgrades are about to shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Ethereum 2.0 is about to be more scalable, secure, and sustainable.
Conclusion
The 8 years of Ethereum have experienced much development and growth. Starting from zero to becoming the main rival of Bitcoin marked the strategic journey of Ethereum. However, as a platform for software, it needs to evolve more. Some crucial improvements are yet to come.
