Ethereum’s five year anniversary is coming up July 31 with milestones around growth and more than $108M in wrapped Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain.
The world’s second largest cryptocurrency has experienced a rollercoaster of emotions over the past five years, rising to dizzying heights in 2017 amidst the ICO boom before crashing back down to earth during the subsequent bear market in 2018.
Issues of security, sustainability and scalability have been commonly raised over the past few years, with the Ethereum blockchain often becoming clogged during volatile periods of the market.
Mounting gas prices have also been an issue, with some people reporting transaction costs of up to $50 during the CryptoKitties craze at the end of 2017.
I just realised that it is exactly 2 years since a bunch of us got together in a basement in Berlin and first discussed putting a beacon chain at the the heart of #Ethereum 2.0.
This was a total re-architecting of the project, but, oh my, it’s turning out well. pic.twitter.com/sTgUZ3y4pQ
— Ben Edgington | benjaminion.eth (@benjaminion_xyz) June 30, 2020
However, MyEtherWallet CEO and founder Kosala Hemachandra believes significant progress has been made and that the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will “change the definition of blockchain technology”.
He said: “In the last five years, Ethereum’s growth across the board has been exponential. In some ways, it has redefined what blockchain technology is capable of. Today, the Ethereum community has many passionate developers, dapps that are friendly to new users, and plenty of well documented concepts.
“As we’ve seen with past Ethereum iterations, ETH 2.0 will once again change the definition of blockchain technology by creating a secure and sustainable system capable of competing with centralized scaling solutions.”
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