A review of the top ten key moments in Ethereum, a world computer experiment lasting 10 years.

Author: Nancy, PANews

On July 30, 2015, with the block height reaching the preset 1028201, a decentralized world computer quietly launched in a small office in Berlin. Today, ten years later, Ethereum has evolved from an experimental project into a crucial cornerstone that supports thousands of applications, connects tens of thousands of developers, and leads innovations in the cryptocurrency space.

At this historic juncture, the Ethereum Foundation launched The Torch NFT transfer event to pay tribute to the developers, users, and ideas that have shaped Ethereum over the past decade. Ultimately, this NFT will be destroyed to commemorate Ethereum's ten-year journey.

This article from PANews will review ten key historical moments in the development of Ethereum, covering technological breakthroughs, policy games, ecological development, and market turning points.

2013-2014: Ethereum white paper release and ICO launch

In November 2013, at just 19 years old, Vitalik Buterin released the first draft of the Ethereum white paper and shared this concept for the first time through an email titled "Introducing Ethereum: A General Purpose Smart Contract / Decentralized Autonomous Organization Platform." He later recalled in a blog post, "This draft was the culmination of months of thinking and working in the field of 'cryptocurrency 2.0.'"

In the months following the release of the white paper, Vitalik quickly assembled a founding team of eight people, including Anthony Di Iorio, who was responsible for early funding support, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, Mihai Alisie, co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, Amir Chetrit, a participant in the early crypto project Colored Coins, Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot, Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys, and Jeffrey Wilcke, a developer of the Go language client.

In January 2014, at the North American Bitcoin Conference held in Miami, USA, Vitalik officially introduced Ethereum to the public for the first time. This speech caused a huge reaction and quickly attracted the attention of a large number of developers, investors, and early evangelists. Shortly thereafter, Gavin Wood published the Ethereum Yellow Paper, serving as the technical specification of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which is referred to as the "technical bible of Ethereum."

On July 22, 2014, Ethereum officially launched its ICO, raising over 30,000 Bitcoins in just 42 days, equivalent to approximately $18 million at the time. A total of 72 million ETH were issued at an average price of $0.3. Such a large fundraising scale also sparked considerable doubts and controversy at the time.

In 2015: Ethereum mainnet launched, producing the genesis block

In March 2015, the Ethereum official blog systematically announced the roadmap for Ethereum's four development stages, clarifying the evolutionary path from foundational technology to widespread user applications: Stage One is Frontier, with the primary goal of launching mining operations, establishing a trading circulation mechanism between Ethereum and Bitcoin, initiating DApp testing, and assisting early users in uploading smart contracts with Ether; Stage Two is Homestead, the formal stage following Frontier; Stage Three is Metropolis, marking the stage where Ethereum officially introduces a graphical interface to the general public; Stage Four is Serenity, with the core goal of transitioning from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).

On July 30, 2015, the Frontier phase was officially launched, the Ethereum mainnet went live and produced the genesis block, with a block reward of 5 ETH for the genesis block.

2016: The DAO hack incident and the Ethereum hard fork

In June 2016, a major security incident occurred in Ethereum, known as The DAO attack. The DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization developed by a German startup, which raised over 11.5 million ETH in just 28 days through crowdfunding on Ethereum, equivalent to approximately $149 million at the time.

However, due to vulnerabilities in The DAO code, hackers launched an attack on June 17, successfully transferring approximately 3.64 million ETH, which directly caused the price of Ethereum to plummet by more than 50% that day. Although the funds were stolen, the hackers were temporarily unable to immediately withdraw these assets due to the contract's 28-day lock-up period.

This incident sparked intense controversy within the cryptocurrency community, ultimately leading the Ethereum community to roll back the transaction through a hard fork, recovering the stolen funds. On July 20, 2016, Ethereum officially implemented the hard fork plan at block height 1920000, splitting into two major factions: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

2017: The ICO Craze and Regulatory Storm

In 2017, with the popularity of the Ethereum smart contract platform, more and more startup projects began to adopt the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) method to raise funds from global investors. This model quickly became popular, with total financing reaching billions of dollars throughout the year, with typical projects including EOS, Tezos, Filecoin, and Bancor.

The wave of ICOs has greatly promoted the development of the Ethereum ecosystem. Driven by the increase in market demand and investment enthusiasm, the price of ETH skyrocketed from about $8 at the beginning of the year to over $700 by the end of the year. However, along with the influx of hot money, a bubble quickly emerged in the market, with project quality varying significantly. Many projects were able to raise tens of millions of dollars based solely on a "white paper," and some projects were even suspected of fraud, leading to investors losing their entire investment.

With the frequent occurrence of chaos, global regulatory agencies have begun to pay close attention and take rectification measures, including countries such as China, the United States, South Korea, and Singapore successively introducing policies. On September 4, 2017, the People's Bank of China, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and other seven ministries jointly issued the "Announcement on Preventing Risks of Token Issuance and Financing," clearly stating that ICOs are illegal financing activities, ordering all ICO projects to cease immediately and requiring the return of investors' funds. After the announcement, almost all Chinese ICO projects and trading platforms were quickly shut down, triggering market panic. Subsequently, the U.S. SEC also classified some ICO tokens as securities, emphasizing that relevant projects must comply with the registration and disclosure obligations of U.S. securities law and launching investigations and prosecutions for violations.

Under the pressure of global policy, a large number of ICO projects and platforms have been forced to shut down, funds have rapidly withdrawn, project valuations have significantly declined, and the crypto market has accelerated into a cooling period. Nevertheless, this wave of ICOs has, to some extent, established Ethereum's core position as a DApp and smart contract platform.

2020-2021: A Feast of DeFi and NFTs

The years 2020 to 2021 were a critical turning point for the Ethereum ecosystem, which experienced explosive growth. During this period, DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) rapidly emerged, becoming one of the important driving forces for blockchain technology to enter the mainstream, and establishing Ethereum's position as the central infrastructure of cryptocurrency.

The rise of DeFi began in the first half of 2020, with Compound launching its liquidity mining mechanism in June, allowing users to earn governance token COMP by depositing assets, sparking a yield farming craze. This mechanism was quickly emulated by other protocols, leading to a massive influx of funds and users attracted by high annual percentage yields (APY). Various sectors such as DEX, lending, synthetic assets, and insurance protocols flourished, with representative projects including Compound, Uniswap, Curve, Aave, Sushiswap, and Synthetix. The total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi sector surged from less than $1 billion at the beginning of 2020 to over $200 billion by the end of 2021, setting a new historical record. Despite the DeFi craze bringing about innovation and wealth effects, security incidents such as smart contract vulnerabilities, hacking attacks (like the bZx flash loan attack in 2020), and liquidation risks of highly volatile assets also occurred frequently.

Almost in sync with DeFi, NFTs experienced an explosive breakout in 2021, evolving from niche crypto art into a global cultural phenomenon. Popular NFTs like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) became star assets, with floor prices hitting record highs and celebrities rushing to enter the market; digital artist Beeple's NFT work "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" sold for $69 million at Christie’s auction house, becoming the third most expensive living artist’s work in the world; NFT trading platforms such as OpenSea, Rarible, and Foundation rapidly emerged, with monthly trading volumes skyrocketing from millions to billions of dollars; traditional brands like Adidas, Nike, and Pepsi launched NFT series, integrating NFTs with brand marketing; GameFi projects like Axie Infinity combined NFTs with blockchain gaming, driving the Play to Earn craze.

2020: Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain launched

The year 2020 was an important turning point in the development of Ethereum. On December 1st, the Beacon Chain ( officially went live, which is the first phase of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, marking the transition of Ethereum from a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.

Ethereum 2.0 is a significant upgrade of the Ethereum network, aimed at addressing issues such as scalability, security, and energy consumption that Ethereum faces. It is primarily divided into three phases: the Beacon Chain, Shard Chains, and the Merge. Among them, the Beacon Chain is the core component of the Ethereum 2.0 architecture, mainly responsible for managing validators and coordinating consensus, laying the technical foundation for the future sharding mechanism. Its main functions include validator management, block generation, and reward and punishment mechanisms.

As of July 2025, there are currently over 35.3 million ETH staked, which accounts for 29.17% of the circulating supply of Ethereum. The number of active validators exceeds 1.09 million, demonstrating Ethereum's strong network security and user participation.

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) 2022: Ethereum fully transitioned from PoW to PoS

On September 15, 2022, Ethereum officially completed the merger of the mainnet and the beacon chain (The Merge), marking the Ethereum network's full transition from PoW to PoS. After the merger, the computational power competition relied on by the PoW mechanism is no longer a way to earn block rewards, and the issuance of new ETH has significantly decreased. At the same time, since PoS no longer relies on large-scale GPU devices for mining, the overall energy consumption of the Ethereum network has decreased by more than 99%.

"We have officially confirmed that the Ethereum merge has been completed, marking an important moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today," Vitalik stated at that time.

However, this transformation has also had a significant impact on the existing Ethereum miner community. The GPU mining rigs used by miners are no longer suitable for mining on the Ethereum mainnet. Some miners have chosen to switch to other crypto projects that use the PoW mechanism, while others have exited the mining industry altogether or shifted to other fields such as AI and gaming.

2024: Ethereum Spot ETF Approved

After years of regulatory games and multiple revisions of registration documents, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially approved several issuers' Ethereum spot ETF applications on July 23, 2024. The first batch of products approved for listing comes from well-known institutions such as Grayscale, Bitwise, iShares, VanEck, and Ark Invest.

This approval not only marks a significant breakthrough for Ethereum on the path to compliance but also greatly enhances its market legitimacy and liquidity, becoming an important milestone for Ethereum's move towards mainstream finance.

Nevertheless, the Ethereum staking feature has not yet been included in these ETF products, and related applications are still in progress, with multiple issuers seeking to incorporate a staking yield mechanism in future versions.

As of now, the total net asset value of Ethereum spot ETFs has exceeded $20.66 billion, accounting for approximately 4.64% of Ethereum's total market capitalization, and has achieved net inflows for four consecutive months, demonstrating strong market demand and enthusiasm from institutional participants.

2024: Ethereum Cancun Upgrade

On March 13, 2024, after multiple delays and tests, Ethereum finally completed the highly anticipated Cancun (Dencun) upgrade. This upgrade is not only an important milestone in the technical roadmap but is also seen as a key step in driving Ethereum towards large-scale scalability.

The most core technological improvement of the Cancun upgrade is the introduction of EIP-4844 (also known as Proto-Danksharding), which is the initial stage of Ethereum's transition to full data sharding (Danksharding), and introduces the concept of blobs (data blocks) for the first time. By temporarily storing transaction data generated by L2 scaling solutions in blobs, it significantly reduces data storage costs. The introduction of EIP-4844 brings important changes, including a substantial reduction in L2 transaction fees, improved network scalability, and enhanced developer and user friendliness.

2025: The Rise of the Ethereum Treasury Arms Race

Since the beginning of this year, crypto treasury reserves have become increasingly popular worldwide. Within the Ethereum ecosystem, more and more "Ethereum Micro Strategies" are allocating ETH as a strategic asset reserve.

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According to the latest data from Strategic ETH Reserve, as of July 28, the total amount of strategic ETH reserves has reached 2.32 million ETH, equivalent to approximately $8.98 billion at current prices. A total of 63 institutions or entities are involved, accounting for about 1.92% of the total circulating supply of Ethereum. Among these holding institutions, BitMine and SharpLink Gaming are currently the two largest publicly traded companies in the US by Ethereum holdings. BitMine, led by "Wall Street legend" Tom Lee and supported by Ark Investment Management managed by Cathie Wood, holds over 566,800 ETH, with a market value of approximately $2.2 billion, making it the largest Ethereum treasury institution at present. SharpLink Gaming, supported by Ethereum core ecosystem companies such as ConsenSys and co-CEO'd by former BlackRock executive Joseph Chalom, currently holds over 360,000 ETH, valued at approximately $1.4 billion, making it the second largest institutional holder.