ETHEREUM HISTORY AND WHITE PAPER DOWNLOAD

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain platform that enables the creation and execution of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). It was proposed by programmer Vitalik Buterin in late 2013 as a solution to Bitcoin’s limited scripting capabilities. Buterin envisioned a more flexible blockchain that could support a wide range of decentralized applications beyond simple peer-to-peer transactions.

Ethereum’s development began in early 2014 with a team including Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, and others. The project was crowdfunded through an initial coin offering (ICO) in mid-2014, raising over $18 million, making it one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns at the time.

The Ethereum network officially launched on July 30, 2015, with the release of its first version, “Frontier.” Ethereum’s blockchain introduced the concept of “gas” to measure computational work and enable decentralized applications to run efficiently.

In June 2016, Ethereum faced a major challenge when a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) built on its platform was hacked, leading to the theft of millions of dollars’ worth of Ether (ETH). In response, the Ethereum community decided to execute a controversial hard fork, resulting in the creation of two separate blockchains: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC), with the former reversing the hack and the latter maintaining the original code.

Since then, Ethereum has grown into one of the leading blockchain platforms, fostering the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other innovative blockchain-based technologies. Ethereum’s ongoing transition to Ethereum 2.0, which aims to improve scalability and energy efficiency through a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, is expected to further enhance its impact on the blockchain space.