Ethereum @ 10: A Decade of Innovation & Milestones

A decade ago, on July 30, 2015, Ethereum’s Genesis block went live which started a new era of programmable money & decentralized applications. Since then, the network has weathered crises, major upgrades & powered entire ecosystems of DeFi, NFTs & more. To mark this 10-year milestone, we’ve distilled the top EtherWorld highlights across four key periods: 2015–2017, 2018–2020, 2021–2023 & 2024–2025. Dive in to relive the pivotal moments that have shaped Ethereum’s journey so far.

2015–2017

1. Olympic Testnet Launch (May 7, 2015): The very first public Ethereum testnet, i.e., “Olympic” or “Ethereum 0.9” was launched to stress test the protocol under heavy adversarial loads, complete with a 25,000 ETH prize for finding forks. It uncovered crucial performance & security issues ahead of the mainnet debut.
2. Frontier Mainnet Released (July 30, 2015): “Frontier” marked Ethereum’s official mainnet launch, enabling developers to deploy smart contracts & dApps live on chain and setting the initial block gas limit at 5 million, laying the foundation for the protocol’s upgrade & governance model.
3. Homestead Hard Fork (Mar 14, 2016): Homestead introduced protocol improvements such as EIP 2 (difficulty bomb delay) and formalized transaction status codes, boosting network stability & security and signaling Ethereum’s shift from experimental to production grade infrastructure. Link
4. DAO Crisis & Emergency Hard Fork (July 20, 2016): In response to a $50 million exploit of The DAO smart contract, the community executed an emergency hard fork to restore stolen funds, resulting in Ethereum (with the reversal) & Ethereum Classic (without), and setting a lasting governance precedent. Link
5. Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Forms (Mar 2017): Over 30 industry leaders, i.e., JPMorgan, Microsoft & Intel, joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance to standardize & accelerate blockchain adoption for enterprise use cases, producing key specifications for permissioned & hybrid deployments. Link
6. Byzantium Upgrade Goes Live (Oct 16, 2017): As the first half of Metropolis, Byzantium activated eight EIPs, including zk-SNARK support and gas cost reductions, enhancing privacy, performance & developer ergonomics and further delaying the difficulty bomb to keep proof of work viable pre-The Merge. Link
7. CryptoKitties & ERC-721 Explosion (Dec 2017): The viral success of CryptoKitties, i.e., built on the new ERC-721 NFT standard, demonstrated Ethereum’s capacity for unique digital assets, sparking a surge of collectibles, gaming & art projects and driving mainstream NFT adoption.
8. Parity’s OpenEthereum Revival (Dec 29, 2017): Parity Technologies rebranded its client as OpenEthereum, i.e., a fast, lightweight, community driven client with WASM support, ensuring continued client diversity & resilience into 2020 and beyond.

2018–2020

1. Aya Miyaguchi Joins EF as Exec Dir (Feb 15, 2018): Aya Miyaguchi was appointed Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, bringing her deep experience from roles at Kraken Japan & the Japan Blockchain Association to strengthen EF’s research, community & ecosystem support.
2. Constantinople & Petersburg Forks (Feb 28, 2019): Ethereum activated the long-awaited Constantinople & Petersburg hard forks at block 7,280,000, delivering five EIPs (e.g., EIP-145 bitwise shift opcodes, EIP-1052 extcodehash) to reduce gas costs & pave the way for ProgPoW & Eth2.
3. Istanbul Upgrade (Dec 8, 2019): The Istanbul hard fork (block 9,069,000) brought six EIPs—improving Interop (BZ 2 precompile for Zcash), gas-cost tweaks (EIP-2028 & EIP-2200), and resistance to denial-of-service attacks—boosting performance & privacy for DeFi & dApps.
4. Muir Glacier Delay (Jan 2, 2020): To counter Ethereum’s accelerating “difficulty bomb,” Muir Glacier (EIP-2384) postponed the Ice Age by ~611 days, stabilizing block times & buying the community time to finalize Eth2 merge preparations.
5. Beacon Chain Genesis (Dec 1, 2020): Ethereum’s PoS Beacon Chain launched at genesis 0x000…000, introducing validators, attestations & the beacon consensus layer, i.e., kickstarting the multi-phase Eth2 roadmap toward full PoS & shard chains.
6. EIP-1559 Proposal Deep-Dive (July 2020): The London upgrade’s centerpiece, EIP-1559, proposed a new “base fee” burn mechanism & dynamic block size to smooth gas fees, improve UX & make ETH partially deflationary, i.e., a landmark rethink of Ethereum’s fee market.
7. Layer-2 Rollups Overview (Nov 2020): Amid rising gas costs, Rollups (Optimistic & ZK) emerged as leading Layer-2 scaling solutions—batching transactions off-chain & posting minimal data on Ethereum to boost throughput to hundreds of TPS while inheriting L1 security.
8. DeFi Summer Recap (Aug 2020): Ethereum’s “DeFi Summer” saw TVL soar from $1B to $10B, with AMMs (Uniswap v2), lending markets (Compound, Aave) & yield farms (SushiSwap) driving composable innovation—and highlighting the need for scalable infrastructure.

2021–2023

1. Berlin Hard Fork (Apr 14, 2021): The Berlin upgrade implemented four EIPs (2565, 2929, 2718 & 2930) to introduce access lists, a new transaction envelope type and optimized precompile gas costs, improving performance and reducing transaction fees.
2. London & EIP-1559 Activate (Aug 5, 2021): The London upgrade’s centerpiece EIP-1559 introduced a base fee burn mechanism with dynamic block sizing, smoothing gas fees and making ETH partially deflationary over time.
3. Altair Beacon Chain Fork (Oct 27, 2021): Altair activated light client support, reduced validator exit queue limits and added sync committee rewards to enhance Proof-of-Stake network security and client efficiency ahead of The Merge.
4. Arrow Glacier Delay (Dec 9, 2021): Arrow Glacier (EIP-4345) postponed the difficulty bomb by approximately 5.6 million blocks to maintain consistent block times and ensure network stability as Ethereum prepared for its transition to PoS.
5. Merge – Bellatrix & Paris (Jul 20, 2022): Bellatrix upgraded the Beacon Chain consensus layer and Paris triggered the Execution Layer fork at TTD 58750000000000000000000, successfully transitioning Ethereum from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
6. Post-Merge EL Fork (EIP-2124) (Oct 7, 2022): This fork introduced an execution-layer fork identifier to ensure clients correctly recognize post-Merge consensus changes, enhancing network coordination and client compatibility.
7. Shapella Withdrawals Go Live (Apr 12, 2023): The Shanghai (Execution Layer) and Capella (Consensus Layer) upgrade enabled on-chain withdrawals of staked ETH and implemented EIP-3651 to warm the coinbase for cheaper block rewards.
8. Dencun & Proto-Danksharding (Mar 13, 2024): The Dencun upgrade combined Cancun and Deneb forks to introduce blob-carrying transactions and proto-danksharding, paving the way for scalable data availability solutions and lower calldata costs.

2024–2025

1. Pectra Goes Live on Ethereum Mainnet (May 7, 2025): The Pectra upgrade merged Prague (Execution Layer) & Electra (Consensus Layer) forks, introducing EIP-7251 to raise the validator stake limit to 2048 ETH and EIP-7702 to add smart-contract capabilities to EOAs, boosting performance & validator flexibility.
2. BEAM Consensus Research Call (Feb 17, 2025): The inaugural BEAM call reviewed early spec drafts, client-team alignments & performance benchmarks for Ethereum’s proposed Zero-Knowledge-friendly consensus overhaul, marking a key step toward modernising Ethereum’s consensus layer.
3. Hoodi Launched (Mar 17, 2025): Ethereum’s new Hoodi testnet replaced Holesky to provide a stable, mainnet-like environment for Pectra testing, validator exits & staking ops, overcoming Holesky’s prolonged non-finality & exit-queue bottlenecks.
4. Glamsterdam Upgrade Preview (Jan 9, 2025): Core devs outlined headliner EIPs, spec-freeze timelines & proposed 30-day audit windows for Glamsterdam, giving the first public look at Ethereum’s post-Fusaka feature roadmap.
5. Sepolia History Expiry Test (Jun 1, 2025): The Sepolia testnet began on-chain history-expiry experiments to prune state older than one year, advancing Ethereum toward stateless architecture & sustainable node operation.
6. Partial History Expiry Rollout (Jul 8, 2025): Geth, Besu & Nethermind implemented opt-in pruning under EIP-4444, slashing storage footprints by hundreds of GB and moving the network closer to stateless clients.
7. Fusaka Devnet-3 Launch (Jul 15, 2025): Devnet-3 began its “happy-path” stress test with a 45 M gas limit, enabling devs to measure throughput, block-propagation latency & I/O bottlenecks under near-mainnet conditions.

Conclusion

Ten years on, Ethereum stands stronger than ever, i.e., a testament to relentless innovation, vibrant community support & the vision of a decentralized future. As we look ahead to the next decade: danksharding, broader real-world asset tokenization & even more powerful dApp, we celebrate not just technological milestones but the people behind them. Here’s to another ten years of pushing boundaries & making the blockchain dream a reality.

If you find any issues in this blog or notice any missing information, please feel free to reach out at yash@etherworld.co for clarifications or updates.

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