Ethereum (ETH) was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a programmer and cryptocurrency researcher who wanted to create a platform beyond Bitcoin’s capabilities. Unlike Bitcoin, which focuses on digital money, Ethereum was designed as a decentralized platform to run smart contracts—self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code. Development started in early 2014, with a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $18 million. The Ethereum network officially launched in July 2015 with its first version called “Frontier.” Since then, Ethereum has grown to become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, powering thousands of decentralized applications (dApps) and pioneering decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs. Its ongoing upgrades, like Ethereum 2.0, aim to improve scalability and energy efficiency.
