That vision sparked interest from fellow technologists, including Gavin Wood, who would go on to write the Ethereum Yellow Paper, a key technical document that helped legitimize the project.
In mid-2014, long before Ethereum became a household name in crypto, the Ethereum Foundation launched a public presale. ETH was sold at an initial fixed exchange rate of 2,000 ETH per BTC, gradually decreasing over 42 days to 1,337 ETH per BTC.
The sale raised over 31,000 BTC, valued at roughly $18.3 million at the time, and distributed 60 million ETH.
Since then, Ethereum has grown into the second-largest blockchain by market capitalization. It has powered countless innovations, from DeFi and NFTs to Layer-2 scaling and zero-knowledge proofs.
The network has also undergone major milestones, including the DAO crisis, the hard fork that followed, and The Merge, which transitioned Ethereum from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
“Ethereum has demonstrated non-stop uptime, proving itself as the definition of antifragile. It has continually evolved to serve as a reliable trust layer for our fast-growing digital world.”
Lubin also noted that Ethereum’s appeal now extends far beyond the crypto-native world. Financial giants like BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Visa have begun building on the network, attracted by its programmability and security.
He noted:
“Ethereum offers a borderless, transparent, and decentralized financial architecture, opening up entirely new avenues of growth and innovation and enabling far greater economic and political agency for people and communities.”
According to him, Ethereum aims to be the backbone of a more secure, open, and programmable digital world over the coming decade.
He said:
“Ethereum is designed for this future. Privacy. Censorship resistance. Security. Open source at the root. These are not features, they’re values. That’s why people come to Ethereum to build their dreams”
“As we grow, the ecosystem must maintain its commitment to where it started: decentralized & robust network, permissionless applications, & global open-source contribution. Winning will not rely on any single entity. Resilience is created by the growth of the whole community.”
Meanwhile, Lubin also stated that:
“Beyond finance, Ethereum will serve as critical infrastructure for the next wave of innovation across networks of decentralized social graphs, stablecoins, decentralized identity systems, decentralized physical infrastructure, data marketplaces and autonomous AI agents.”
