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2015 CE The modern era Technology

Ethereum Mainnet Goes Live

Ethereum's public Frontier network launched on July 30, 2015, following a crowdsale that had distributed ether tokens the prior year.

Setting the scene

Vitalik Buterin's white paper proposed decentralized applications beyond currency; developers soon treated ether as 'oil' paying for computation steps on the EVM.

What happened

Early hacks—like the 2016 DAO exploit—forced community conversations about immutability versus bailout forks, shaping crypto politics.

Why it still matters

Proof-of-stake migration later addressed energy critiques that plagued proof-of-work chains. Memorable detail: genesis block references a London Times headline about bank bailouts, echoing Bitcoin's genesis message.

Background

Ethereum generalized Bitcoin's scripting idea into a Turing-complete virtual machine, enabling tokens, DAOs, NFTs, and recurring hard-fork debates.

Sources

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