A brief history of Ethereum & its Founders

Ethereum’s first introductory whitepaper was originally published by the Founder, Vitalik Buterin in 2013, before properly launching in 2015 with additional founders Joseph Lubin, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Gavin Wood. Being a programmer, Buterin was introduced to cryptocurrency in 2011 when he began writing for a publican called Bitcoin Weekly. Later on that year, he was a co-founder and leading writer of Bitcoin Magazine. It was here that Buterin went on to become the inventor and co-founder of Ethereum, with the intent of creating an alternative protocol for building decentralised applications, with emphasis being placed on situations where rapid development time, security for small and rarely used applications, and the ability of different application to very efficiently interact, are important. Buterin initially argued that Bitcoin and other blockchains could benefit from other applications, as well as further robust language and governance for application development that could eventually lead to blockchain gaining attachments of real world assets such as stocks and property.

Initial software development began in 2014 via Ethereum Switzerland GmbH, with a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation formed as well. It was then crowdfunded by an online public sale from July to August 2014, going live on July 30th, 2015. Ethereum has had many network upgrades and undergone several planned protocol upgrades, using hard forks to make important changes affecting the underlying functionality and incentive structures of the platform. The most noticeable being moving from relying on a Proof of Work model (PoW), to migrating to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus model. Recognising that Ethereum was excellent; however, not perfect, the Ethereum Foundation realised it had the ability to improve aspects such as performance, scalability, sustainability and security, which it did with Ethereum 2.0 launching on the 1st of December, 2020. Basically, ETH2 was an upgrade that involved Ethereum shifting their mining model to a staking model. Here, ETH2 = Staked ETH, meaning when users staked their ETH, it converted to ETH2, in a process of actively participating in transaction validation on a Proof of Stake blockchain. Currently in 2021, as a cryptocurrency, Ethereum has the second largest market capitalisation, only second to Bitcoin.