Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain platform that supports smart contracts and programmable applications. Launched in 2015, it is the second-largest cryptocurrency network by market capitalization and the dominant platform for NFTs, decentralized finance (DeFi), and on-chain governance. Milady Maker, Remilio Babies, Bonkler, and most of Remilia Corporation's on-chain projects are deployed on Ethereum.

History

Origins and whitepaper

Ethereum was conceived by Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer, who published the Ethereum whitepaper in November 2013 at age 19. Buterin had previously co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and had grown frustrated with Bitcoin's limited scripting capabilities, which he believed prevented the network from supporting generalized applications. His whitepaper proposed a new blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete programming language, enabling developers to write arbitrary programs — smart contracts — that execute automatically on-chain.

The founding team that coalesced around the project included eight co-founders: Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, Amir Chetrit, and Jeffrey Wilcke. Gavin Wood authored the Ethereum Yellow Paper, a formal technical specification of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and developed the Solidity programming language. Joseph Lubin later founded ConsenSys, one of the largest Ethereum infrastructure companies. Charles Hoskinson later left to co-found Cardano.

Launch and early development

In July–August 2014, the team conducted a public token sale, raising approximately 31,000 BTC (worth around $18 million at the time) in exchange for ether (ETH). The Ethereum mainnet launched on July 30, 2015.

In 2016, a smart contract called The DAO raised over $150 million in ETH through a crowdfunding sale but was exploited by an attacker who drained approximately $60 million worth of ETH through a reentrancy vulnerability. The Ethereum community controversially voted to hard fork the chain to reverse the theft, producing the current Ethereum mainnet. The minority that rejected the fork continued the original chain as Ethereum Classic (ETC).

The Merge

Through its early years, Ethereum used proof-of-work consensus — the same energy-intensive mining mechanism used by Bitcoin. On September 15, 2022, Ethereum completed the Merge, transitioning to proof-of-stake. Mining was eliminated entirely, reducing the network's energy consumption by approximately 99.95%. Validation is now performed by stakers who lock ETH as collateral, with the network randomly selecting validators to propose and attest to new blocks.

Dencun and scaling

On March 13, 2024, Ethereum activated the Dencun upgrade, which introduced EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding). This added a new transaction type carrying "blobs" of data that are pruned from the chain after approximately 18 days, dramatically reducing the cost of posting data for Layer 2 rollups and cutting Layer 2 transaction fees by 90–95%.

Technical overview

Smart contracts and the EVM

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the runtime environment in which all smart contracts execute. It is deterministic and sandboxed: every node in the network runs the same code and arrives at the same state. Contracts are written primarily in Solidity (a high-level language resembling JavaScript) or Vyper, then compiled to EVM bytecode for deployment.

Gas

Every computation on Ethereum requires gas, a unit measuring computational work. Users pay gas fees denominated in ETH (specifically in gwei, a subunit of ETH). Since the London upgrade in August 2021, Ethereum has used a base fee mechanism (EIP-1559) that burns a portion of every transaction fee, making ETH deflationary under periods of high activity.

Token standards

Ethereum's token standards define interfaces for smart contracts to implement fungible and non-fungible tokens:

• ERC-20: The standard for fungible tokens, used by stablecoins, governance tokens, and most cryptocurrencies built on Ethereum.
• ERC-721: Proposed in January 2018 and finalized in June 2018, ERC-721 defines the NFT standard. Each token under ERC-721 is unique and non-interchangeable. Milady Maker, Remilio Babies, and Bonkler are all ERC-721 collections.
• ERC-1155: A multi-token standard supporting both fungible and non-fungible tokens within a single contract, commonly used for gaming items and editions.

Layer 2 scaling

Layer 2 networks are separate blockchains that settle transactions in batches back to Ethereum mainnet, inheriting its security while offering faster and cheaper transactions. The dominant Layer 2 architecture is rollups, which post compressed transaction data (or blobs, post-Dencun) to mainnet. Major rollups include Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync. As of early 2025, Layer 2 networks collectively held over $42 billion in total value locked (TVL).

Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a Swiss non-profit established to support the development of Ethereum and its ecosystem. It funds core protocol research, client development, and developer tooling. In March 2026, the EF published the EF Mandate, a foundational document defining the EF's role as one steward among many and codifying CROPS — Censorship resistance, Open source, Privacy, Security — as the non-negotiable properties the foundation commits to protecting.

Relation to Remilia

Ethereum is the infrastructure layer for Remilia Corporation's entire on-chain output. Milady Maker was minted on Ethereum in August 2021 as an ERC-721 collection of 10,000 PFPs and has become one of the most culturally significant NFT projects on the network. The ETH Necklace trait in Milady Maker directly references the Ethereum diamond logo.

The Vitalik Milady Arc — Buterin's January 2025 purchase of Milady #9286 for 5.82 ETH and adoption of it as his profile picture — is regarded as a defining moment connecting Ethereum's founding cypherpunk values with the Milady community. The Eth Chan character created by Shiro, depicting an anime mascot for Ethereum, similarly bridges Ethereum community identity and Remilia-adjacent art and was recognized by Buterin himself.

See also

• Vitalik Buterin
• Ethereum Foundation
• EF Mandate
• Vitalik Milady Arc
• Milady Maker
• ETH Necklace
• Eth Chan
• Cypherpunk Purity Spiral