Eight years of Ethereum: Looking back at the eight-year evolution of Ethereum and Consensys

Author: Consensys; Translation: Golden Finance 0xxz

A look at the history, the growth achieved over the past eight years and the road ahead.

An idea born in an instant has the potential to change the course of history. This is what Ethereum means to us. Ethereum is more than a blockchain or a technological innovation, it represents an evolution of our existing political, economic and social systems. Today, Ethereum celebrates its eighth anniversary. As we celebrate with the rest of the ecosystem, we also want to reflect on our shared history, the growth we’ve achieved over the past eight years, and our future path to continue our mission of advancing the Ethereum protocol for builders around the world.

How it started: Ethereum Genesis Block

It starts with an idea. Vitalik presented his vision for executable smart contracts at the 2014 Miami Bitcoin Conference. Consensys founder Joseph Lubin flew to Miami to begin preparations for the launch of Ethereum, the largest smart contract blockchain.

Even before the first block was confirmed, Joseph Lubin contributed to the later Ethereum protocol with different development teams around the world. This era in Ethereum history is defined by four major moments that occurred between 2013 and 2015:

* November 2013, Block 0: Vitalik Buterin released the Ethereum white paper, which attracted the attention of technical experts from all over the world such as Joseph Lubin.

* January 2014, Block 0: Vitalik Buterin officially announces Ethereum at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami.

* November 2014, Block 0: Consensys was founded by Joseph Lubin, co-founder of the Ethereum project.

* July 2015, Block 1: Frontier, the first real-time version of Ethereum, generated and loaded the Ethereum genesis block.

RELEASE: Tools for developers to start the web emerge

The genesis block gave birth to the network, which means that the future of Ethereum is in the hands of programmers, entrepreneurs, and ultimately dreamers. Between 2016 and 2019, the first projects of Consensys were brought to market.

Metamask becomes one of the first wallets to interact with the Ethereum network, whether it’s sending ETH and other tokens to friends or connecting your wallet to a dapp. Infura created the first Ethereum API so other web3 developers can launch applications without taking on the complexities of running their own node infrastructure.

This era of the Ethereum-Consensys story is defined by six key milestones driven by product innovation and developer adoption unfolding over the next three years:

* July 2016, Block: 1802780: Kumavis and Dan Finlay launch MetaMask as a browser extension.

*November 2016, Block: 2544905: Infura launches, enabling developers to launch their web3 applications without running their own infrastructure.

* February 2017, Block: 3101407: The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) was established, and the founding board members include Consensys, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, Microsoft, Intel, CME Group, etc.

* June 2017, Block: 3801682: Consensys Diligence was launched with the mission of improving blockchain security and best practices in the Ethereum ecosystem.

*June 2019: 103,483 monthly Truffle downloads by Ethereum-based developers.

*August 2019: PegaSys Pantheon, the Java client for Ethereum, was renamed to Hyperledger Besu and became the first public blockchain in the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger project.

Comprehensive Software Company: The Beginning of Mainstream Adoption

In 2020, Consensys restructured into a comprehensive software company with a mission to support developers building dapps on Ethereum, and the end users who interact with them.

By supporting protocol development on Ethereum and other Ethereum-compatible blockchains, Consensys is facilitating decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) on Ethereum played a key role in the first major wave of adoption.

This period in history spawned the beginning of mainstream adoption around the world, and the entry of Ethereum into popular culture and news media, unprecedented in previous eras.

MetaMask available for download in the Apple and Android app stores, $25 billion in NFT sales in 2021, Ethereum merger executed flawlessly - showing the world that decentralized coordination is possible.

*September 2020, Block: 10773004: MetaMask mobile launched on iOS and Android.

*June 2021: 2.91 million unique addresses on Ethereum using at least one DeFi protocol.

*February 2021: USD stablecoin market grows to over $25 billion.

*August 2021: NFT popularity increased 10x, with NFT sales hitting a record $3.25 billion.

* February 2022: Consensys acquires MyCrypto, strengthening MetaMask for Ethereum applications and end users.

* March 2022: Consensys secures $450 million in Series D funding to continue driving the Ethereum protocol forward.

*September 2022: Ethereum successfully completed the merger of proof-of-stake, eliminating 99.99% of its carbon footprint overnight, making the network the greenest blockchain in the world in 2023 according to ERC ranking data.

* December 2022: The number of MetaMask global users will exceed 100 million in 2022.

** Steady Growth: The Future of Ethereum **

Looking back at our shared history on July 30, 2023, eight years after the start of Ethereum’s journey, there is nothing but a continued drive for innovations that will enable the next generation of builders and accelerate mainstream adoption.

This means opening up MetaMask's backend to outside developers via Snap to help drive adoption and empower the community to extend MetaMask functionality. As well as improving the user experience for end users through account abstraction and a steadily growing number of monthly active users, which has grown to 100 million by 2022 since MetaMask was founded in 2016.

We will continue to support over 400,000 developers using Infura to connect to Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains, while working with other RPC providers to build new decentralized infrastructure networks and into web3.

Our R&D team will lead the core protocol development and EIP work with the Ethereum Foundation and teams around the world.

Our latest innovation, Linea, is a zk-EVM L2 network whose mainnet launched on July 11th, processed nearly 1 million transactions, and has a TVL of over $47 million, which will scale Ethereum with low-cost transactions and fast finalization square.

Finally, we will continue to demystify ethereum and web3 through public education, commissioning and publishing data insights such as those from the Global Survey of Cryptocurrency Perceptions published last month

According to the Ethereum roadmap, there are still many steps to go. We will be here to see everyone grow and build with all of you, now and forever. Happy Anniversary, Ethereum!