Evolution of Blockchain Technology Over the Years

Most people think that blockchain technology or the DLT systems have evolved lately; however, this has been in the forefront for a very long period of time. However we have realized its potential just recently after the 2008 global financial crisis. In this article we shall see how DLT/blockchain?technology has evolved over the years.?

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Evolution of the Blockchain Technology?

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We have categorized the timeline in phases to understand the growth.?

?Inception Phase

?1991

In 1991, the concept first came to?public when Stuart Haber and W.Scott Stornetta started working on a project that focussed on time-stamping data to validate its authenticity. Once their POC was put to test, they published a paper that mentioned the use of a chain system to cryptographically create a block that contained data in it. The upside of creating the block was it cannot be tampered and contained all the information of the preceding blocks.?

?1992

In the year 1992, the concept of Merkle Tree was introduced that simplified veracity of the blocks. To put that into perspective, instead of checking all the blocks, through the Merkle Tree, a transaction can be validated by looking back. In the concept of Merkle Tree, for the first time the PoW or Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism was used.?

?2004

?Hal Finney, a computer scientist and a cryptography expert first proposed the RPoW or Reusable Proof-of -Work. In the RPoW consensus mechanism, Hal Finney introduced the concept of transferring a RSA signed token in exchange for a non-exchangeable hash-cash based token that eliminated the problem of double spending. Due to this evolutionary invention, the much touted Bitcoin blockchain could adopt a UTXO model in which all the other participating nodes can validate a transaction based on a sharable RSA token received by all the nodes. If all the participating nodes have participated and given their consensus on the transaction, the state of the network gets updated with immutability. Meaning, the state cannot be changed; hence, balancing the system and preventing any fraudulent attacks. It was at this point that the concept of DDoS or a 51% attack narrative was born.?

?2008

At the backdrop of the 2008 global meltdown, central bank bailouts and gross misuse of the centralized financial system, an anonymous creator named Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer eCash system. Through the use of the hash cash or RPoW consensus mechanism, Bitcoin’s UTXO model was introduced that used mining as a method to validate the transaction. At that time, ASICS or Application Specific Software Hardware System was born that was used for validating transactions.?

?2009

The first real POC or Proof of Concept of Bitcoin mining and reward system was put infront of the public. Satoshi Nakamoto was the first person himself who mined the first Bitcoin block on January 3, 2008 which rewarded him 50 Bitcoins. The name of the first mined block was “Genesis.”

In the same year, On January 12, Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin transferred 10 BTC to Hal Finney.?

All these events were followed by the launch of the Bitcoin exchange marketplace on January 31, 2009 which brought Bitcoin to the limelight and people started knowing about the technology.?

?2013

Another great event in 2013 was when 11 million?BTCs were traded for a valuation of 41 billion. However it was not all sunshine and rainbows for blockchain and Bitcoin since the technology and its first offspring was banned in China and Thailand.?

However, another science prodigy, Vitalik Buterin thought that the need of a scripting language is necessary to build a decentralized economy. Pursuing this thought, he conceptualized the Ethereum Blockchain and later?built the same that became the first smart-contract powered blockchain.?

?2014

The later date was 2014 when?Ethereum?rolled as the smart-contract blockchain. After the successful completion of transactions through a “If This, The That” state, the concept of smart contract powered blockchain was born. The Linux Foundation taking inspiration from the Ethereum blockchain launched their own open-source Dapp building project that provided?frameworks, tools, and libraries to build decentralized dapps.?

?2016

Acknowledgement of blockchain as a revolutionary financial innovation started to build with the Bank of England being the first noteworthy stakeholder to invest in the tech. It was later followed by the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank. Even IBM put forward the concept of B-a-a-S or Blockchain-As-a-Service. Later on, R3 also launched the Corda blockchain.?

?2017

2017 could be the watershed year in the history of blockchain with Harvard Business School naming it as a Foundational Tech. Following such statements by influential bodies, the retail trust started to increase and Bitcoin touched the magical?$20,000 figure.?

?2018

The first experience of a major bear market bloodshed when BTC dropped from its grace. The coin that touched $20,000 nosedived to $3800. Major tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter banned crypto advertisements. However, everything was not grim for crypto and blockchain since the European Commission established the Blockchain Observatory and Forum which acted as a silver lining in the midst of dark clouds.?

?2019?

Blockchain Technology started gaining major traction with Amazon Web Services launching their blockchain initiative through Amazon Blockchain Services. The same year even saw Gibraltar United getting paid in crypto. The crypto narrative that it can be used as a payment medium was born.?

?2020

BTC soared! The return of the bull market and DeFi summer started. For the first time, BTC reached $20,000 in years. Ethereum’s plan to roll-out ETH 2.0 also started at that time.?

?2021

Adoption by II or Institutional Investors. Elon Musk went on to say that he would accept BTC and Doge for payments. NFT wave also started which also led to the rise of another key technology that could completely change the dynamics of reality– the Metaverse!?

?2022

2022 has been a dreadful year for the crypto community with protocols going bankrupt like 3AC, Terra, Celsius, Voyager, FTX. Also, the SEC or Securities and Exchange Commission tightened the noose on blockchain. However blockchain started to thrive by building on top of use-cases like supply chain, entertainment, healthcare, transportation, real-estate, and automation.?

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The Future?

The future looks promising for blockchain since exploitation by centralized authorities: Be it the government or corporations have built a strong narrative that the need for a parallel financial system is needed which is much more efficient and easy to use. Wars, inflation and flawed monetary policies of the government have made people believe why crypto is an answer built on top of the blockchain technology.?