Ethereum was proposed by Vitalik Buterin in 2013 and launched in 2015 by a team including Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, and others. Development is coordinated by the non-profit Ethereum Foundation and a decentralized community of independent teams worldwide.

Ethereum runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a shared computational environment where smart contracts execute deterministically. Transactions change the state of this global ledger, and each operation consumes "gas," a metered unit that prevents spam and measures computational cost.

ETH is required to pay gas fees, deploy and interact with smart contracts, and stake for network validation. It also serves as collateral in DeFi, a medium of exchange across applications, and a base asset for NFTs and token markets.

Gas represents the computational effort required by an action. The base fee adjusts automatically depending on network congestion, while users can add an optional priority tip for faster confirmation. Since Dencun, many users transact through Layer 2 rollups where fees are significantly lower.

The Merge (Sept 15, 2022) combined Ethereum's original proof-of-work chain with the proof-of-stake Beacon Chain. It ended mining, introduced validator staking, and reduced ETH issuance by roughly 90 percent while preserving compatibility for all applications.

EIP-1559, implemented in 2021, revamped Ethereum's fee system. Each transaction burns its base fee, permanently removing ETH from circulation. Combined with reduced issuance after The Merge, this mechanism can make ETH deflationary during periods of high network use, though supply varies over time.

Security relies on thousands of distributed validators staking ETH. Misbehavior leads to slashing, ensuring aligned incentives. Multiple consensus and execution clients (like Lighthouse, Prysm, Teku, Nimbus, and Geth) maintain diversity and resilience against network failures.

Layer 2 (L2) solutions - such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync, and Starknet - process transactions off-chain and post proofs to Ethereum. This inherits Ethereum's security while drastically reducing fees and increasing throughput for users and developers.

Activated in March 2024, Dencun introduced proto-danksharding via EIP-4844. It added "blob" data fields for rollups, cutting data costs and paving the way for full danksharding. This upgrade was one of the largest scaling milestones since The Merge.

As of late 2025, the total supply is about 120 million ETH, with over 27 million ETH staked. Because EIP-1559 burns fees and PoS issuance is modest, net supply growth fluctuates and has at times been slightly deflationary.

ERC-20 defines fungible tokens, ERC-721 defines unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and ERC-1155 supports both in one contract. These standards power most digital assets, games, and marketplaces built on Ethereum.

ENS translates long wallet addresses into readable names like vitalik.eth. It works through smart contracts that map domain names to blockchain identifiers, simplifying payments and identity across Web3 applications.

Ethereum stands out for its combination of long-term stability, developer depth, and active evolution. It pioneered smart-contract functionality, but its strength today lies in the size and maturity of its ecosystem - thousands of decentralized applications, Layer 2 networks, and interoperable tools built around the EVM. Continuous upgrades like The Merge and Dencun have modernized its technology while maintaining backward compatibility, allowing Ethereum to scale without losing decentralization. This blend of security, adaptability, and open innovation remains unmatched among programmable blockchains.

Many newer blockchains aim to improve on Ethereum's speed or fees. Some are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing apps to run on multiple chains. However, Ethereum remains the most widely used smart-contract platform, and most major Layer 2s and compatible networks ultimately connect back to it for security and settlement.

The next major milestone is the Fusaka upgrade, a hard fork scheduled for December 3, 2025 (subject to final confirmation). Fusaka focuses on scalability, efficiency, and node performance, introducing PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) - a mechanism that lets nodes verify blob data without downloading it in full. This reduces resource requirements for validators and expands Ethereum's overall data capacity, strengthening support for Layer-2 rollups. The upgrade will also increase blob capacity per block, enabling cheaper and faster rollup transactions. It bundles multiple Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to optimize gas usage, enhance the EVM, and improve compatibility with technologies such as zero-knowledge rollups. A new concept called Blob-Parameter-Only (BPO) forks will allow smaller, targeted updates between major upgrades, giving Ethereum more flexibility to adapt to network demand. Following Fusaka, Ethereum's roadmap will continue along the Surge phase of its long-term scaling plan, with future releases like the Glamsterdam upgrade expected to build on these data-availability enhancements. Together, these steps move Ethereum closer to its goal of becoming a highly scalable, energy-efficient, and globally accessible settlement layer for decentralized applications.