These applications run on smart contracts. A smart contract is code stored on a blockchain that runs on its own when set conditions are met. It works like a vending machine: put in the right input, and you get a fixed output, with no clerk in the middle.
Ethereum’s design rests on three core pieces:
- The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM): the shared computer that runs smart contracts on every node
- Gas: a unit that measures how much computing work a transaction needs
- Ether ($ETH): the native token used to pay for gas
How Did Ethereum Go From Paper to Launch?
Ethereum’s first release, called Frontier, went live on July 30, 2015. It created the genesis block, the very first block on the chain, and introduced the EVM. Frontier was built mainly for developers.
Homestead followed on March 14, 2016, at block 1,150,000. It was Ethereum’s first planned hard fork. A hard fork is a rule change that every node must adopt to stay on the same chain.
The DAO Hack: Ethereum’s First Big Test
In 2016, a project called The DAO used smart contracts to run a decentralized venture fund. Over a 28-day funding period, it raised about $150 million worth of $ETH from more than 11,000 people.
What Went Wrong
In June 2016, an attacker used a flaw in The DAO’s code to take about $50 million worth of $ETH.
How The Community Responded
On July 20, 2016, at block 1,920,000, Ethereum ran a hard fork that moved the stolen funds into a recovery contract. Some users rejected the fork and kept running the original chain, which became Ethereum Classic (ETC).
How Did Ethereum Switch From Mining to Staking?
For its first seven years, Ethereum used proof-of-work (PoW). Under PoW, miners compete with computing power to add new blocks. On September 15, 2022, Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake (PoS) in an upgrade called the Merge.
Under PoS, validators lock up, or stake, $ETH to propose and check blocks. The Merge joined the original chain with the Beacon Chain, a separate PoS chain that had been running alongside it. It also made the “difficulty bomb” obsolete. That piece of code had been added in 2015 to push developers toward PoS.
Staking has grown steadily since. Bitwise reported a record 43.8 million $ETH staked in Q3 2026, or 35.9% of supply, though the staking yield slipped to 2.63%.
About a year before the Merge, the London upgrade added EIP-1559, which burns part of every transaction fee. Burning removes $ETH from circulation, which changed $ETH‘s tokenomics by tying supply to network use.
What is Ethereum Working On Now?
Mainnet blocks carried a 60 million gas limit as of October 13, 2026, up from 30 million. The next upgrade, Glamsterdam, focuses on scaling the main chain, also called layer 1 (L1). It includes:
- Enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS): moves block building into the protocol itself
- Block-level access lists (EIP-7928): give nodes a map of what each block touches, so they can process it faster
- Gas repricing (EIP-8037 and EIP-8038): raises the cost of creating new state data and adjusts data access costs
- A 200 million gas limit target: about 3.3 times the current level
Glamsterdam went live on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, 2026. It is set for the Hoodi testnet on October 26, 2026, at 17:42:48 UTC. Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter said Hoodi is the final testnet before mainnet. The Ethereum Foundation says the mainnet date has not been decided, and the official roadmap lists only an unconfirmed fourth-quarter 2026 target.
A higher gas limit does not guarantee the same jump in real throughput. How many transactions fit in a block still depends on how much gas each one uses.
$ETH opened at $2,446.67 on October 21, 2026, and rose to $2,459.92 by 7:21 a.m. ET. That is about 50% below its all-time high of $4,946.05, set on August 24, 2025.
$ETH fell about 7% between October 4 and October 11, with an intraday low of $2,406.15 on October 8.
Conclusion
Ethereum began as a 2013 whitepaper and launched in 2015 as a blockchain that runs smart contracts. It has recovered from the DAO hack, split from Ethereum Classic, moved to proof-of-stake, and raised its mainnet gas limit from 30 million to 60 million. More than a third of all $ETH is now staked. With Glamsterdam in its final testnet stage, Ethereum is preparing to move block building into the protocol and raise its gas limit target to 200 million.
