Ethereum – an overview
Vitalik Buterin (https://vitalik.ca) conceptualized Ethereum (https://ethereum.org) in November, 2013. The core idea proposed was the development of a Turing-complete language that allows the development of arbitrary programs (smart contracts) for blockchain and Decentralized Applications (DApps). This concept is in contrast to Bitcoin, where the scripting language is limited and only allows necessary operations.
The first version of Ethereum, called Olympic, was released in May, 2015. Two months later, a version of Ethereum called Frontier was released in July. Another version named Homestead with various improvements was released in March, 2016. The latest Ethereum release is called Muir Glacier, which delays the difficulty bomb (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2384). A major release before that was Istanbul, which included changes around privacy and scaling capabilities.
The difficulty bomb is a difficulty adjustment mechanism that...
