Ethereum is the first blockchain project to implement smart contract functions. It carries the largest ecosystem and is currently the second largest project in the crypto.

Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, providing a programmable transaction functionality that enables developers to eploy smart contracts，accelerating the birth of dApps for various purposes. In 2014, development work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015.

The milestone event of Ethereum happened in September 2022,  the merge of Ethereum was completed.  Ethereum 2.0 was a set of three or more upgrades, also known as "phases", meant to transition the network's consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake, and to scale the network's transaction throughput with execution sharding and an improved EVM architecture. The switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake has cut Ethereum's energy usage by 99%.

In April 2023，Ethereum completed the upgrade of Shanghai, since then, users could withdraw the ETH staked at the node. This flexible mechanism has also gradually increased the amount of staked Ethereum.

Above are only for introduction, not intended as investment advice.