what is ethereum 
ethereum is a decentralized global software platform powered by blockchain technology it is most commonly known by investors for its native cryptocurrency ether eth and by developers for its use in blockchain and decentralized finance application development anyone can use ethereum it s designed to be scalable programmable secure and decentralized to create any secured digital technology its token is designed to pay for work done supporting the blockchain but participants can also use it to pay for tangible goods and services if accepted investopedia michela buttignolhistory of ethereumvitalik buterin credited with conceiving ethereum published a white paper introducing it in 2014 2 the ethereum platform was launched in 2015 by buterin and joe lubin founder of the blockchain software company consensys 3the founders of ethereum were among the first to consider the full potential of blockchain technology beyond just enabling a secure virtual payment method since the launch of ethereum ether as a cryptocurrency has risen to become the second largest cryptocurrency by market value it is outranked only by bitcoin 4one notable event in ethereum s history is the hard fork or split of ethereum and ethereum classic in 2016 a group of network participants gained control of the smart contracts used by a project called the dao to steal more than 50 million worth of ether 5the raid s success was attributed to the involvement of a third party developer for the new project most of the ethereum community opted to reverse the theft by invalidating the existing ethereum blockchain and approving a blockchain with a revised history however a fraction of the community chose to maintain the original version of the ethereum blockchain that unaltered version of ethereum permanently split to become ethereum classic etc 6initially ethereum used a competitive proof of work validation process similar to that of bitcoin after several years of development ethereum finally switched to proof of stake in 2022 which uses much less processing power and energy the dencun hard fork was activated on march 13 2024 7 this hard fork introduced proto danksharding named in honor of the proposers protolambda and dankrad feist to the ethereum mainchain proto danksharding is a stepping stone for future upgrades to the ethereum blockchain 