Happy 3-Year, Ethereum

While a long 15 years away from legality, there’s no denying how much Ethereum has matured since the platform went live on July 30th, 2015. Ethereum opened up a new doorway for fundraising and inspired developers to tinker with new variations of smart contract frameworks, leading to the creation of the dozens of dApp platforms around today.

Just how far has ETH come? From a development perspective, three of Ethereum’s four proposed updates are almost fully in place. Each update polished Ethereum’s original format, allowing for a cleaner user experience, new gizmos, better security, and an easier route to scalability:

Frontier (July 2015)

Homestead (March 2016)

Metropolis (Byzantium [October 2017]; Constantinople [October 2018])

Serenity (TBA)

While less important, it’d be a disservice to gloss over ETH’s change in price. From an original ICO price of ~30 cents per ETH to a ~$460 today, the token earned early investors north of a 150,000% ROI.

Then vs. Now

A lot can change in 3 years. Glancing at the Ethereum network on Day 1 and comparing it to Day 1,096, it’s an entirely different animal:

Network Hash Rate: Then (11.53 GH/s) vs. Now (289,580 GH/s)

Block Difficulty: Then (0.121 TH) vs. Now (3,557 TH)

Unique Addresses: Then (9,205) vs. Now (39,779,732)

Ask The Builders

To weigh in on the significance of today, there are few better to ask for commentary than those who are actively building in the market:

Nick Cowan, Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX) CEO: “This meteoric rise of tokens as a new route to financing for companies has changed the world and I think we’re still only at the beginning. There is still so much more to come.”

Robert Rabasco, Orvium Co-Founder: “Today we celebrate Ethereum’s anniversary as the adoption of this technology becomes more widespread, backed up with more than 250,000 developers and 1,800 registered DApps. Perhaps more importantly, 94 out of the top 100 blockchain projects have launched on top of the Ethereum network.”

And looking to the future:

Henri Pihkalak, Streamr CEO: “No one knows how vital this achievement [blockchain scaling] will be more than Vitalik himself who said at the start of the year that 2018 would be the moment for scalability and various solutions like Plasma, proof-of-stake, and privacy to be rolled-out.”

Nicolas Gilot, Ultra Co-CEO: “This year, Ethereum will need to prove that it can scale and evolve to proof-of-stake. 2018 is also the year of competition for smart contract blockchains including the likes of EOS, Tezos, and Zilliqa.”

Ethereum, you’re growing up before our eyes *blows nose into tissue*. Here’s to the next 3 years.