Creation of Ethereum
Ethereum white paper was published in 2014 by a then 19-year-old Vitalik Buterin, who envisioned a platform that uses blockchain technology to keep immutable transaction history data, like Bitcoin, while housing decentralized self-executing programs that later became known as dApps.
Two years after the white paper was published, the Ethereum platform was launched by Buterin and Joseph Lubin, a Canadian-American entrepreneur and founder of ConsenSys. In addition to Buterin and Lubin, additional Ethereum co-founders include Gavin Wood (creator of smart contract programming language Solidity and creator of Polkadot and Kusama), Charles Hoskinson (American entrepreneur and founder of Cardano), and Anthony Di Iorio (early Bitcoin investor and CEO of Decentral).
Since the initial launch, the Ethereum platform has undergone several protocol updates (commonly referred to as hard forks), with each introducing new functionality, changes to incentives, and security upgrades. The last protocol upgrade, called London hard fork, took place in August 2021.
In 2016, Ethereum suffered a $150 million hack of a decentralized autonomous organization that was designed to raise funds for project development. In the hack's aftermath, Ethereum was split into two blockchains: Ethereum, which reimbursed stolen funds, and Ethereum Classic, which continued on the original chain.