The Ethereum Story · Module 2 · 2014 to 2016 · 35 min
Ethereum went live on 30 July 2015 as an early, experimental release, then grew up through planned upgrades over the following year.
What you will learn
Explain what ether and gas are, and why they exist.
Describe how the early network was funded and launched.
Understand what a network upgrade is.
The lessons
Lesson 1: The presale and the Ethereum Foundation
Building a network takes money, so in the summer of 2014 the team ran a public presale of ether. People could pay in bitcoin and receive ether when the network started.
A non-profit organisation, the Ethereum Foundation, was set up to support the work. Its job is to fund research and development and help the community, but it does not own or control Ethereum.
Nobody owns Ethereum. Like Bitcoin, it is run by many computers around the world, and changes need wide agreement among the people who run them.
Remember: A foundation can support a network without owning it.
Lesson 2: Launch day
Ethereum went live on 30 July 2015 with a release called Frontier. It was an early version, aimed at developers who were comfortable with rough edges, not at ordinary users.
The network has its own coin, ether, often written as ETH. Ether is used to pay for running programs on the network. The fee is measured in a unit called gas, much like fuel for a car: the more work a program does, the more gas it burns.
Gas matters because it stops anyone from filling the network with endless work for free. It also means that when the network is busy, everyone competes for limited space, which pushes fees up.
Remember: Ether is the coin and gas is the fee for doing work on the network.
Lesson 3: Homestead and the first apps
The developers planned Ethereum as a series of stages, each with a name. The second, called Homestead, activated in March 2016 and was the first major step towards a stable network.
A change like this is an upgrade. Everyone who runs the network has to install new software before a set point, and from then on the new rules apply. When it goes smoothly, almost nobody outside the community notices.
Developers began to build the first experiments on Ethereum: tokens, voting tools and games. Some were clever and some were rough. One of them, The DAO, became the subject of the biggest crisis in Ethereum’s early history, covered in the next module.
Remember: Upgrades are how a live network changes without starting again.
Key dates
When
What happened
Why it matters
Summer 2014
The ether presale takes place
Funds the work before the network exists
30 July 2015
The Ethereum network launches with the Frontier release
The first live network, aimed at developers
March 2016
The Homestead upgrade activates
The first major step towards a stable network
Key terms: ether (ETH), gas, mainnet, testnet, node, upgrade. Open the glossary
Module quiz
4 questions. Tap an answer to see if you are right and why.
1. When did Ethereum go live?
The Frontier release launched on 30 July 2015.
2. What is gas?
Gas is like fuel: more work burns more gas.
3. What is the Ethereum Foundation?
It supports the work but does not own or control Ethereum.
4. What was Homestead?
Homestead was the first major upgrade after launch.
Do it yourself
Open a block explorer such as Etherscan, find the latest block, and note how many transactions it holds. Write one sentence on what that tells you about how busy the network is.
Not financial advice. This lesson is history and education only. Prices are rounded and shown only to explain how big the swings were.