The Development History and Upgrade Path of Ethereum

Since its inception, Ethereum has been a pioneer in blockchain and smart contract technology. As a trailblazer in blockchain gaming, Ethereum continues to lead the development of the GameFi sector. This article will take you through the development history of Ethereum and explore the evolution of its ecosystem.

1. The Origin and Development History of Ethereum

At the end of 2013, Vitalik Buterin released the Ethereum white paper, marking a new chapter in the development of blockchain. In 2014, Ethereum launched its ICO, raising approximately $18 million in Bitcoin within 42 days. In July 2015, Ethereum released its first version, Frontier, and proposed the far-reaching ERC20 standard.

2016 was a tumultuous year for Ethereum. In March, the Homestead upgrade was launched, improving stability and security. However, the DAO incident occurred in May-June, leading to the hard fork of Ethereum into ETH and ETC. In early 2017, the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance was established to promote enterprise applications. In October, the first phase of the Metropolis upgrade, Byzantium, was completed.

The ICO boom in 2017 swept through the blockchain world, and Ethereum became the preferred platform. However, it also exposed issues of network congestion and high gas fees. In early 2018, the cryptocurrency market crashed, and Ethereum established a roadmap to transition from PoW to PoS. In 2019, the DeFi ecosystem exploded, and stablecoins and NFT games emerged.

2. The Rise of On-Chain Games on Ethereum

In 2017, CryptoKitties became the first phenomenon-level game to gain popularity on Ethereum, combining ERC-721 to become one of the earliest NFT projects. In 2018, Gods Unchained came into view as a card game on Ethereum. In 2021, Axie Infinity rose to prominence, driving the P2E chain game craze. Metaverse games such as Sandbox and Decentraland also developed on Ethereum.

Innovation points of Ethereum chain games:

• True asset ownership and scarcity
• Created a real game economic ecosystem

Challenges faced:

• Scalability is limited, transaction speed is slow
• High Gas fees affect user experience

3. Ethereum 2.0 Upgrade

Ethereum 2.0 is a major upgrade to the 1.0 mainnet, aimed at improving performance, scalability, security, and sustainability.

Upgrade Reason:

1. Solve high fee and congestion issues
2. Responding to the challenges of competing public chains
3. Meet users' new demands for security and privacy

Main upgrade content:

1. Shard Chain - Improve Scalability
2. Proof of Stake ( PoS ) - Enhanced Decentralization
3. Beacon Chain and Casper Mechanism - Enhancing Security

Upgrade Roadmap:

1. The Merge - Completed the transition to PoS
2. The Surge - Improve scalability through sharding
3. The Scourge - Mitigating MEV Centralization
4. The Verge - Achieving Minimalist Blockchain Verification
5. The Purge - Clear Historical Data Burden
6. The Splurge - Achieving Other Miscellaneous Upgrades

Ethereum 2.0 will bring positive impacts, enhancing performance and security, and promoting innovation. However, the upgrade process also faces challenges such as technical issues and ecological adaptation. The future development of Layer 2 solutions will inject new momentum into Ethereum, enabling more applications and data to be on-chain.