The Development History and Upgrade Roadmap of Ethereum

Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has undergone several major upgrades, continuously improving its functionality and performance. This article will outline the development history of Ethereum and explore its future upgrade roadmap.

The Development History of Ethereum

At the end of 2013, Vitalik Buterin published the Ethereum white paper, marking the beginning of a new era for smart contract platforms. In July 2015, Ethereum officially released its Frontier version. In 2016, Ethereum went through a major crisis with The DAO incident, which was ultimately resolved through a hard fork.

2017 was a prosperous year for Ethereum. The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) was established, the ICO boom swept in, driving the price of Ethereum to soar. At the same time, Ethereum completed the first phase of the Metropolis upgrade.

In 2018, the cryptocurrency market experienced a winter, but the development of Ethereum 2.0 continued to advance. In 2019, the DeFi ecosystem flourished on Ethereum, bringing new growth momentum to Ethereum.

The Rise of On-Chain Games on Ethereum

In 2017, CryptoKitties skyrocketed on Ethereum, becoming the first phenomenal blockchain game. In 2018, card games like Gods Unchained began to rise. In 2021, Axie Infinity led the P2E wave, with monthly revenue exceeding $300 million at one point.

However, the high Gas fees and congestion issues of Ethereum have also restricted the further development of blockchain games. This has prompted Ethereum to accelerate the pace of its scaling upgrades.

Ethereum 2.0 Upgrade Roadmap

To address the issues of scalability, security, and decentralization, Ethereum has proposed a comprehensive 2.0 upgrade plan:

1. The Merge: Transition from PoW to PoS, completed in 2022

2. The Surge: Improve scalability through sharding technology

3. The Scourge: Mitigating the centralization issues brought by MEV

4. The Verge: Optimize state storage for a lighter validation.

5. The Purge: Clear historical data, reduce node burden

6. The Splurge: Other miscellaneous upgrades, such as account abstraction, etc.

This series of upgrades will comprehensively enhance the performance and functionality of Ethereum, laying the foundation for the further development of its ecosystem.

Outlook

The upgrade of Ethereum 2.0 will significantly enhance network performance, improve security, and increase the level of decentralization, providing possibilities for more innovative applications. However, the upgrade process also faces challenges such as technical and ecological compatibility.

In the future, with the development of Layer 2 solutions, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to achieve larger-scale application implementation. I believe that in the near future, we will see a more powerful and efficient Ethereum network.