Ethereum’s 8th birthday: Crypto industry shares its top moments

Today marks eight years since the Ethereum Foundation first announced the rollout of its network.

The crypto community has come together to celebrate the 8th birthday of the Ethereum network, marking eight years since the Ethereum Foundation first sent the network live.

On July 30, 2015, former Ethereum Foundation CCO Stephan Tual penned a blog post, officially announcing that the network had been rolled out.

“The vision of a censorship-proof ‘world computer’ that anyone can program, paying exclusively for what they use and nothing more, is now a reality,” he wrote. 

Eight years later, Ethereum and its native currency Ether (ETH) has grown to become the second-largest crypto asset in existence, boasting a market capitalization of $225 billion and more than 1,900 monthly active developers.

8 years of growth

Community members marked the occasion by sharing fond memories and looking back at its prices, development and overall growth since inception.

Bankless co-host Ryan Sean Adams noted that Ethereum reportedly boasts $400 billion in secured value, $3.6 billion in annualized profits and a total of 17.8 million blocks of digital assets.

Happy birthday Ethereum!

$400 billion in secured value, $3.6 billion in annualized profits, and a total of 17.8 million blocks of uncensorable digital property.

Not bad for an 8 year old.

— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) July 30, 2023

Using the networks’ eth birthday as an opportunity to reminisce, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao posted a tweet on X recounting the time that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stayed with him in Tokyo in the months leading up to the launch of Ethereum.

CZ said Buterin was speaking about ETH “non-stop” at the time and joked about missing out on buying Ethereum at inception. “If I had bought ETH then, I might not have had the need or drive to start Binance. Who knows?” he quipped.

On this 8th birthday of #Ethereum, a little throw back to May 2, 2015, in Tokyo, just before #ETH was officially born. @VitalikButerin stayed in my apartment in Tokyo during this trip. He was already working on and talking about ETH non-stop. And I still missed (didn’t buy)… pic.twitter.com/84B6KN73Qf

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) July 30, 2023

Reformed Bitcoiner Udi Wertheimer celebrated the occasion with a dash of humor, referring to the Ethereum network as his “favorite Bitcoin sidechain.”

Happy birthday Ethereum!

My favorite bitcoin sidechain

— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) July 30, 2023

Related: Ethereum is about to get crushed by liquid staking tokens

Ethereum was co-founded by a number of prominent figures, most notably Buterin, along with Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin and Anthony Di Iorio.

By allowing developers to create smart contracts and build new blockchain-based applications, Ethereum became integral to the initial coin offering  boom in late 2017 and the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and development — dubbed “DeFi summer” — in 2020.

It was 8 years ago today, we launched #ethereum from a small office in Waldemarstraße 37A in Berlin

What a journey its been since then?

It became the most widely used cryptocurrency network, switched to PoS and spawned many alt-L1s and L2s

Excited for what the future brings! pic.twitter.com/bmgcjTVLbE

— Lefteris Karapetsas | Hiring for @rotkiapp (@LefterisJP) July 30, 2023

A little more than a year after DeFi summer, Ether notched its all-time-high of $4,878 on Nov. 10, 2021. At the time of writing ETH was changing hands for $1,869.

Most recently, crypto enthusiasts witnessed the successful implementation of the Merge upgrade on Sept. 15, 2022, which saw the network transition from aproof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism — driving down its energy usage and unlocking staking incentives for validators and investors.

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