Written before the Ethereum merge: The evolution of blockchain, a forward path filled with forks, new chains, and upgrades

Author: Wang Mozhi, Wesely Vision

This research will trace the evolution of blockchain from its inception to the development of the current complex ecosystem along a timeline:

• The first stage begins with the birth of Bitcoin (2009-2015)

• The second stage marks the era of Ethereum's birth (2015-approximately 2018)

• The third stage starts with the emergence of other new chains (approximately 2018-)

Unlike many new phenomena, blockchain is fortunate; it did not perish because it is constantly evolving.

Similar to biological evolution, the evolution of blockchain can be observed from many angles. However, the fundamental mechanism of biological evolution lies in mutation, while the ultimate mutation of blockchain is forking and new chains. Additionally, mild improvements in blockchain manifest as upgrades unanimously approved by the community, which is also part of evolution.

This research will trace the evolution of blockchain from its inception to the development of the current complex ecosystem along a timeline. It divides the history from January 2009 to the present into three stages: the first stage begins with the birth of Bitcoin, the second stage marks the era of Ethereum's birth, and the third stage starts with the emergence of other new chains. The beginnings of these three historical segments are clear, but their endings will intertwine with others. This tree-like structure helps us understand the growth history of an ecosystem.

1. The Evolution of BTC

This is also a story of a simple thing transforming into a complex system.

Bitcoin (BTC) was proposed on November 1, 2008, and the genesis block began operation on January 3 of the following year. The designers could never have imagined that blockchain would make rapid advancements in the following decades, changing the lives of so many people.

This is something that has never existed in human history, so we can only use some analogous concepts to describe it, which is why BTC has various nicknames.

For instance, the earliest description in the Bitcoin white paper as a "peer-to-peer payment tool" was indeed effective in small-scale operations. The earliest payment use case can be traced back to May 22, 2010, when a young programmer, Laszlo Hanyecz, purchased two pizzas from Papa John's for 10,000 bitcoins, making May 22 a pizza day for the entire crypto community.

However, as Bitcoin became increasingly expensive, the originally designed decentralized network lacked corresponding scalability. The capacity limit of each block and the speed of block generation locked BTC into a scarce commodity. At this point, we referred to it as "digital gold."

But we won't hang ourselves on a single tree. Like all living beings, populations, and materials, when simplicity can no longer meet enough demand, the system begins to evolve new branches, testing new possibilities in different directions. Like all systems that can exist for a long time, complexity and diversity are the ultimate ways to cope with different environmental challenges.

During the 2017-2018 period, accompanied by another bull market for BTC, forking became the focus of the entire community. I was not fortunate enough to experience history firsthand, but looking back at that time: ideologically, BTC's vision as the world's legal currency was almost universally suppressed by mainstream forces, and blockchain needed use cases beyond payments; technically, the contradiction of the impossible triangle (decentralization, scalability, speed can only take two) had intensified, with both sides holding their respective positions and supporting mining pools; in terms of investment, early miners had already made a fortune, while newcomers sought to discover new mines.

Forking was eagerly anticipated. This was also the evolutionary method designed from the beginning for BTC, where each node independently runs a full node, but the entire network only authenticates and operates on the longest ledger (the longest chain). In theory, anyone can initiate a fork, but too small a fork lacks sufficient hash power support, currency credit, and community consensus.

According to statistics from Forkdrop on forking events, there have been a total of 68 forks in BTC's history, with 62 occurring in the years 2017-2018.

If not experienced firsthand, it is hard to imagine the madness and dreams, fervor and desolation, open conflicts and covert struggles among these 68 forks, and how tumultuous it was at that time. But after the noise, a new era quietly gestated, just like other things in this world.

The story of Bitcoin is far from over, but the history of forking has already settled into silence. The following sections will narrate this history in three parts: the beginning, the climax, and the transition.

1.1 The Beginning of Evolution (2009-2016)

According to Sasha Ivanov's "The History of Bitcoin Forks (2009-2018)," the early evolution of Bitcoin (before 2017) was relatively mild, with multiple forks receiving support from everyone. These so-called "soft forks" were no different from traditional network client upgrades (except for whether they were mandatory). Even in later contexts, "soft forks" were no longer considered a true fork but merely an iteration of the client version upgraded by all miners (verification nodes).

In BitMex's "Complete History of Bitcoin Consensus Forks," BTC's first fork is traced back to July 28, 2010. By disabling the OP_RETURN function, it fixed a major flaw that allowed anyone to spend any bitcoins. This fork was merely symbolic and soon only appeared in articles about Bitcoin's history.

Among the 17 forks recorded in Bitcoin's early years (before 2017), at least 14 were similar functional upgrades, and the remaining three did not cause significant consequences.

1.2 The Crazy Forks (2017-2018)

If I had to use one word to describe the blockchain world during those two years, I would say: crazy. New coins, new projects, new exchanges, new crypto big shots, new mining machines and pools, and the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) sentiment was everywhere.

Among the many forks during those years, only 13 are still trading on exchanges today, most of which are on the verge of zero. Even Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin once stated that among the Bitcoin fork events, most fork projects could be ignored except for BCH, calling BSV a scam. (Source: Vitalik Buterin "Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond")

But if we relax the criteria a bit, let's look at the top three forks that still hold some influence today: BCH, BSV, and BTG (Bitcoin Cash, Satoshi Vision, and Bitcoin Gold).

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on August 1, 2017

Among various ways of writing history, BCH is the first true fork of Bitcoin. It faced the issue of insufficient block capacity in Bitcoin. The 8MB block size proposal put forward by Bitmain was more radical than Bitcoin's previous Segwit upgrade, ultimately leading to the split.

This fork was unprecedented. In previous history, although there were disagreements within the community, it had never caused a split among miners. The division of miners, as the underlying validators of Bitcoin, meant that the community began to separate both ideologically and factually. The possibility of merging was almost gone.

Although such forks had long been written into the "prophecy" from the beginning of Bitcoin's design, that day eventually arrived. However, for all those who held Bitcoin before the fork, it was a day worth celebrating; their Bitcoin holdings remained unchanged, but they gained an additional asset on the new BCH chain. This sudden "airdrop" of coins was referred to as "candy," so on that day, every BTC holder became a child.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) on November 15, 2018

If BCH was the first rebel of the original Bitcoin community, then traitors are always easily betrayed. A year later, the BCH community also split. The new fork coin was BSV, a project that incorporated the founder's vision into its token name. As a descendant of radical reformers, it ironically adopted retro as its label. Perhaps because of this, Vitalik referred to it as a scam.

However, in the PoW (Proof of Work) era dominated by miners, as long as miners are validating, anything can have value. Just like this time, BCH holders were again airdropped BSV's "candy."

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) on October 24, 2017

Since BCH first forked from Bitcoin, Bitcoin has continuously branched out for various reasons. As a classic joke in the blockchain community goes: "Every day before a coin goes to zero, everyone is happy." Every fork has a grand reason, and Bitcoin has become increasingly valuable in the expectation of fork airdrops.

BTG might be the first fork after BCH, or perhaps the second fork in Bitcoin's history. But as we all know, the second is often forgotten, unless it is remembered for the double-spending incident (the "double-spend attack") that occurred six months later on May 18.

That day also created history. In Bitcoin's history, there had never been a single validator controlling more than 50% of the nodes, but on BTG, we witnessed this long-predicted blockchain event.

1.3 The Calm After the Storm (2019-)

Starting in 2018, Bitcoin's price began to decline. Gradually, forking became unprofitable. The candy was no longer sweet, so the Bitcoin community began to quiet down and became increasingly conservative.

It wasn't until November 14, 2021, that the Bitcoin community conducted the Taproot upgrade with over 90% of miners' agreement. This was probably the most important upgrade since Segwit, which had already been many years ago.

Although the Bitcoin Layer 2 Lightning Network had a white paper as early as 2015, it has developed slowly.

1.4 Summary

To date, Bitcoin has a history of 13 years. From the mild evolution of the first seven years to the sudden radical forks in the middle period, and then to the return to calm in the last four years.

I am reluctant to call this transformation a Bitcoin bubble. After every bubble, a foundation is laid for longer-term development (the South Sea bubble spurred the development of the Americas, and the tulip bubble developed the modern flower market in the Netherlands). Moreover, even in recent years, Bitcoin has maintained about 40% of the market share and reached historical highs during the latest bull market, even though its growth rate is far behind that of other token projects.

However, growth is no longer what Bitcoin should focus on. After a difficult financing process in 2015, Vitalik and his Ethereum became the new explosive growth driver of blockchain in 2020. But that is another story.

2. Ethereum: A Ladder or Pandora's Box

On November 27, 2013, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin first publicly announced the Ethereum white paper, laying the foundation for Ethereum's birth. On July 22 of the following year, Ethereum conducted its first fundraising through Bitcoin, raising over 30,000 bitcoins (worth about $18.4 million at the time). In 2015, Ethereum "Frontier" went live, which was the initial version of Ethereum. Although the available features were very limited at that time, it later evolved into a vast ecosystem of applications, making Ethereum one of the most successful projects since the birth of blockchain technology.

From the launch of Ethereum's first version to now holding $38.9 billion in TVL as the largest public chain, Ethereum has only taken 7 years. During these 7 years, Ethereum has gradually advanced the concept of a "world computer" through numerous soft and hard forks. Currently, the merge (The Merge) is a significant event in Ethereum's development process, attracting the attention of global practitioners.

Main public chain TVL share situation Data source: defillama

As the date of Ethereum's merge approaches, debates about its fork (hereafter referring to hard forks) have become increasingly heated. To understand the current forks, we first need to look back at the past and see what forks ETH has experienced in its development history? What are the biggest differences compared to this fork? What paths will these differences lead Ethereum to? Has POS become more centralized? How will capital ultimately choose in the fork?

2.1 The History of Ethereum Forks

The most famous Ethereum fork was triggered by the theft of The DAO funds. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum has also experienced multiple hard forks during its development. These forks either aimed to modify block sizes, change the GAS fee mechanism, or were purely "airdrop-style" forks.

Expanse (EXP)

Expanse is the first fork network of the Ethereum blockchain, first announced on September 7, 2015, on Bitcointalk, and completed the fork a week later at Ethereum block height 800,000. This fork was led by Christopher Franko and James Clayton, the former being a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and the latter creating one of the most popular crypto communities on Facebook at the time.

Essentially, this fork of Expanse was built using Ethereum's existing technology to create another contract platform. Although Expanse is still active on social platforms, there is basically no ecosystem on-chain.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

On June 17, 2016, the star project The DAO, which had crowdfunded 12 million ETH, was hacked, resulting in the theft of over 3.6 million ETH, accounting for 14% of the entire ETH network at the time. For Ethereum, which had just launched a year earlier, this hacking incident could determine its survival. At that time, Vitalik proposed a plan to first conduct a soft fork in the community, deeming the related transactions invalid, preventing the attacker from withdrawing the stolen ETH, and then initiating a hard fork to recover the stolen ETH. However, this rollback method contradicted the immutable nature of blockchain, leading some miners to leave the Ethereum community during the subsequent hard fork process.

Ultimately, 97% of ETH holders voted in favor of Vitalik's proposal, and the hard fork passed, resulting in the new chain we now know as ETH, while the original chain was renamed Ethereum Classic (ETC). ETC is also the most successful fork chain because it inherits the original blockchain geek spirit, so many people regard it as the true Ethereum. The DAO incident severely undermined the confidence of cryptocurrency users at the time, and because of this event, the once-popular DAO concept was pushed into obscurity, only to resurface five years later with the explosion of DeFi, when DAO began to re-enter the public eye as a governance system.

EthereumFog (ETF)

EthereumFog (ETF) was launched on December 14, 2017, at fork block height 4730660. This fork chain was born to address the lack of distributed storage and distributed computing capabilities in Ethereum. They proposed the concept of fog computing, claiming to provide a more distributed technology closer to the network edge compared to cloud computing. In their own words, they aimed to create an evolved version of Ethereum's "world computer." EthereumFog gained some attention during the Bitcoin fork craze but soon faded from public view.

EtherZero (ETZ)

EtherZero (ETZ) was released on January 19, 2018, at fork height 4936270. EtherZero proposed the attention-grabbing zero transaction fees and instant payment features, launching a two-layer network structure consisting of an arbitration layer made up of main nodes in the network and a PoW consensus layer, which was different from the public chain architecture at the time, and also shortened the block time to 1-2 seconds. Since its launch, ETZ has faced many criticisms; the well-known Ethereum token wallet MyEtherWallet claimed that EtherZero's related code could threaten users' Ethereum funds, and Metamask's official website marked it as a phishing site.

Currently, its official website has long been closed, and social media updates ceased after 2020, making EtherZero just a speck of dust in the history of forks.

Ethereum 2.0: Resetting the Difficulty Bomb Fork

This is a special fork that gained community consensus.

The "difficulty bomb" is an algorithmic mechanism that adjusts chain difficulty based on block time. Its initial setting was to facilitate Ethereum's smooth transition from PoW to PoS, essentially a special mechanism prepared for the current merge. As block height increases, mining difficulty increases exponentially, leading miners to exit the PoW chain when costs outweigh profits, avoiding the coexistence of new and old chains. However, if the merge is not completed before a certain block height, the difficulty bomb will negatively impact the network's performance, causing slow block generation and network congestion. The difficulty bomb has been postponed six times, resulting in six forks, and this year's EIP-5133 proposal postponed it to mid-September, just before the expected merge.

Six postponements of the difficulty bomb Data source: bitinfocharts

Looking back at Ethereum's multiple forks, it can be seen that forking Ethereum may not be difficult, but the challenge lies in what to do after the fork. Even though these forks once stirred up huge waves, they have never shaken Ethereum's position, often just making a lot of noise with little impact.

2.2 Differences Between This Fork and Past Forks

Compared to past forks, especially in contrast to the ETC hard fork, the biggest difference in this fork lies in on-chain assets and ecosystem development.

When the ETC fork occurred in 2016, Tether (USDT) had a market value of only 0.65%, and stablecoins had just begun to enter people's view. The Ethereum ecosystem had not yet started, so there was no need to consider smart contracts and token issues, and the technical implementation difficulty was relatively low. Now, not only have stablecoins become a widely used on-chain asset, but USDT and USDC, which explicitly support the merge, account for over 10.6% of the entire crypto market value. Moreover, Ethereum boasts a TVL of $38.9 billion, with the largest ecological network. Currently, there are as many as 51.2 million smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, and even in the current bear market's inactive phase, it continues to grow at a rate of 50,000 to 60,000 new smart contracts per week.

Stablecoin development from 2017 to 2022 Data source: theblock

Faced with Ethereum's complex ecosystem applications, especially in the absence of foundational infrastructure like Chainlink and Curve, as well as mainstream stablecoin support, PoW fork chains find it challenging to operate the applications that forked out normally. Additionally, whether to remove the difficulty bomb or adjust EIP-1559 after the fork, the establishment of these new rules requires developing new node clients, browsers, and other foundational tools, while also needing to coordinate the governance and maintenance of new chain miners and the community. Therefore, how to handle these issues poses a significant challenge for PoW supporters.

2.3 Aligning and Choosing Sides

Currently, the forks can be primarily divided into two camps: the ETH-PoS camp and the ETH-PoW camp.

The ETH-PoS camp supports the merge and opposes the forking activities, mainly consisting of the Ethereum Foundation, several major stablecoins, and leading infrastructure applications. They hold an absolute advantage in both funding and influence.

• Tether: Will support PoS Ethereum according to the official timeline

• Circle: Will only support the Ethereum PoS chain after the merge is completed

• Aave: Recognizes only the PoS chain as the main chain and will treat the Ethereum mainnet operating under PoS consensus as the new governance system

• Curve Finance: Chooses only chains with stablecoin options

• Chainlink: Protocol and services will continue to operate on Ethereum, not supporting PoW or other forks

• Paradigm: No one in the Ethereum community, except miners, wants to continue using PoW

• FTX: Ethereum futures and perpetual contracts on FTX will track the PoS Ethereum network after the merge

These protocols are the biggest beneficiaries of Ethereum's development. Any fork of Ethereum would weaken the existing community and influence, affecting the prices and stability of these application tokens, bringing unpredictable risks, so choosing to align with PoS is understandable.

The ETH-PoW camp is the main driving force behind the forking activities, mainly consisting of some miners and non-leading exchanges.

• Tron: Supports the Ethereum fork and lists the forked tokens

• F2Pool: Supports letting the miner community decide and will continue to provide mining pool services for ETH PoW

• Gate: Supports pre-forking and will open the forked token exchange function in advance

• MEXC: Supports Ethereum's upgrade and potential hard fork

In summary, projects that are more deeply bound to Ethereum strongly oppose the fork, as PoS has legitimacy, while miners who are kicked out, projects with low binding and reliance on Ethereum, or exchanges that need heat to increase activity will maintain a strong interest in the forked chain. In short, the fork is not a technical competition but a battle of interests.

With the strong push from the Ethereum Foundation, the transition to PoS has become inevitable. In the face of increased regulation and the monopoly of staking node operators and the Ethereum Foundation's influence, some have begun to question whether Ethereum still upholds the blockchain spirit of "Code is Law"? And whether PoS has made Ethereum more centralized?

2.4 Is PoS More Centralized?

Currently, user concerns about Ethereum's increased centralization after the transition to PoS mainly reflect in several aspects:

Staking network centralization: Currently, a total of 13.33 million ETH is staked on the beacon chain, accounting for 11.1% of Ethereum's total supply, most of which is held in centralized staking service providers or exchanges. Among them, Lido, as the leader, accounts for 30.9% of the entire beacon chain, followed by Coinbase at 14.7%, Kraken at 8.4%, and Binance at 6.7%. In total, staking service providers and centralized exchanges account for 63.8%. For PoS, holding over one-third can significantly influence the normal operation of the chain, which may become Ethereum 2.0's Achilles' heel.

Proportional situation of Ethereum staking service providers on the beacon chain Data source: dune

The centralization of staking service providers will directly reduce the ability to resist regulation, especially under the ongoing fallout from the Tornado incident, leading more users to pay attention to the potential risks in this area. On the technical side, organizations like the Ethereum Foundation and Infura, along with core organizations like ConsenSys, are involved, while on the asset side, companies like Lido and Coinbase are present. It can be said that the giants surrounding Ethereum are mostly centralized institutions, which together maintain the largest public chain in this ecosystem. Compared to Bitcoin, the influence of these core organizations is too great, introducing many uncontrollable factors for Ethereum.

Will Ethereum's staking after transitioning to PoS be considered a security? After all, Coinbase's staking services have been investigated by the SEC in the past. As the saying goes, "The taller the tree, the more wind it catches." Whether Ethereum's staking services will be targeted by the SEC is also a potential risk. Additionally, after transitioning to PoS, whether Ethereum's block-producing nodes can maintain good anonymity in packaging transactions and their stability against various new attacks remains to be verified.

2.5 Summary

Ethereum is undoubtedly the center of the current blockchain world, and its past, present, and future are all captivating. Although the Ethereum community does not fork as frequently as the Bitcoin community, it has still given birth to a series of forks led by ETC. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation, centered around Vitalik, continues to drive the self-iteration and evolution of the Ethereum network, as we are currently experiencing with the merge event. At least we can now anticipate an ETH 2.0 version composed of a PoS main chain and L2 expansions.

However, just as Bitcoin's various issues gave rise to Ethereum, Ethereum's problems have also spawned a new generation of blockchains. Some of their founders come directly from the early Ethereum team, some have already practiced PoS that Ethereum is now turning to, and others come from a slightly distant lineage known as consortium chains. These new chains will be the main content of the next section.

3. Blockchain 2.X: The Evolution of New Chains

Although Ethereum brought blockchain into the era of smart contracts, it faced development direction issues similar to those of Bitcoin at that time. High transaction fees and slow verification were only one aspect; more importantly, if the community were allowed to split like the Bitcoin community and insisted on the tradition of PoW, becoming "Bitcoin 2.0" might be inevitable. Looking further back, history does not remember the second.

The main contradiction lies between miners who insist on PoW and project parties (and ordinary users) who hope for PoS. During those days, an unstable temporary balance was born. Even as early as 2015, Ethereum proposed the difficulty bomb plan to shift the verification mechanism to PoS, but in the following seven years (2015-2021), this plan was postponed six times due to miners' objections.

This PoW vs. PoS war has dragged on for years, even leading to internal divisions among Ethereum's founders. In this rapidly changing industry, every day waiting for the war to end is a torment.

Some couldn't wait and, emulating Ethereum's story, started anew. These individuals, lacking initial resources, introduced a new force—VC—into the blockchain industry. This time, the tradition of blockchain was once again broken. With professional investors, blockchain projects began to resemble startup tech companies more, airdrops became less frequent, and "candy" was no longer sweet, while forking gradually became a thing of the past, and PoW faded away.

This story will begin with Polkadot and Cardano, founded by two former Ethereum co-founders, and then move on to a series of PoS public chains claiming to be "Ethereum killers," ultimately concluding with the descendants of consortium chains that branched out long ago.

3.1 The Old Legacy: Former Ethereum Co-founders

In addition to Vitalik, Ethereum originally had seven co-founders. In a later interview, Vitalik himself stated that having eight co-founders might have been a mistake. In the early years of Ethereum's founding, the differences in opinions among the eight founders grew larger, and the other seven co-founders gradually left, leaving only Vitalik at the Ethereum Foundation.

Among them, two co-founders founded Cardano and Polkadot, respectively. It is hard to say whether these two are continuations or variations of Ethereum's ideas, as all blockchains that emerged after Ethereum carry some shadow of Ethereum to varying degrees. Regardless of how much each project emphasizes the uniqueness of its verification mechanism, they are essentially just variations of PoS. These two projects brought us the earliest examples of Ethereum variations.

Cardano (ADA): A Dilemma

Cardano was founded by Charles Hoskinson. There are various rumors surrounding this project, but ultimately, if one must label ADA, slow development cannot be avoided.

According to the timeline provided by Wikipedia:

• From September 2015 to January 2017, Cardano conducted its first token issuance crowdfunding, raising $62 million and selling about 30 billion ADA tokens.

• On September 28, 2019, IOHK announced a partnership with the shoe brand New Balance to use the Cardano blockchain to verify the authenticity of branded sneakers.

• In July 2020, the Shelley upgrade introduced delegated staking features, allowing ADA holders to pool their ADA tokens with other holders to earn rewards.

• On April 27, 2021, Cardano announced a collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education to develop blockchain solutions.

• In September 2021, Cardano announced the launch of the Alonzo mainnet, bringing smart contract functionality to the Cardano blockchain.

This timeline of Cardano is very simple but quite complete. For a full six years after fundraising, Cardano had no smart contracts. Relying on marketing and promotion, it managed to maintain a relatively high market value.

Slow development may also reflect a lack of clear direction. The timeline shows that Cardano covers a wide range of fields, with some concepts still ahead of their time today, but unimplemented concepts remain expectations. They may sustain market value but cannot change the world.

Undoubtedly, they must have done something right.

Polkadot: The Former Cross-Chain King

Compared to the enigmatic Cardano, Polkadot is much easier to understand.

Gavin Wood, as the founder, made cross-chain a synonym for this project. Polkadot and another project, Cosmos, opened a new direction for modular multi-chain blockchains, each achieving excellence in unified consensus verification with different approaches.

In the initial coin offering (ICO) in October 2017, it raised $140 million and began block production in May 2020. In terms of slowness, Polkadot is certainly not inferior to Cardano.

At the same time, in terms of token use case design (economic model) and proposal voting (governance design), Polkadot's standards are far superior to similar blockchains.

Polkadot can be considered a pioneer of distinctive blockchains.

3.2 The Former "Ethereum Killers"

Including Cardano and Polkadot, several blockchain projects were dubbed "Ethereum killers" in 2021. They encountered an industry opportunity when Ethereum's transition to PoS was unsuccessful, but market demand suddenly expanded: BNB, Solana, Terra, Avalanche… At that time, it seemed that every new chain with high speed and low fees could be labeled as an Ethereum killer.

Although it was just last year, it feels like a lifetime ago. Some projects have survived, some have died, and some are still struggling. As species began to multiply, and the blue ocean turned red, elimination and iteration accelerated.

BNB Chain: Binance Exchange

BNB Chain (formerly BSC) was the first Ethereum killer to explode (early 2021). With the support of the largest centralized exchange, it replicated the DeFi gameplay that started six months earlier onto the more efficient BNB Chain, establishing a new public chain DeFi model of DEX liquidity mining + lending. This model was later replicated by other chains multiple times. However, the overly crude replication of Ethereum projects led to large-scale hacker attacks on DeFi projects on the BNB Chain in the middle of the year.

Solana: From DeFi to NFT

Solana is similar to BNB in many aspects—support from the FTX exchange and the initiation of the DeFi model. Under the backdrop of the bull market in 2021, Solana achieved one of the only two hundredfold returns among mainstream coins. During the period from the end of 2021 to 2022, when DeFi faded, it successfully developed the largest NFT market outside of Ethereum. This successful directional transformation may be an inspiration Solana brings to the industry.

Terra: The Rise and Fall of Algorithmic Stablecoins

The yield champion of 2021 was Terra, successfully pushing Solana to second place. The model of blockchain token Luna + 20% yield algorithmic stablecoin UST was attempted to be imitated by other chains in early 2022. However, everything collapsed in May of this year, as panic-driven runs and high yield rates became the last straw that broke the camel's back. As a witness, I think we should thank Terra for teaching us all a lesson.

Avalanche: The Cross-Chain Ethereum Project

Before Avalanche, all projects were considering how to develop their native projects and compete with Ethereum. Avalanche was the pioneer of public chains that massively introduced Ethereum DeFi projects. By being compatible with Ethereum's system (EVM), leading DeFi projects on Ethereum all had their versions on Avalanche. The influx of traffic boosted the value and exposure of the token while also raising Avalanche's token value.

3.3 A New Return: The Legacy of Meta (formerly Facebook) Consortium Chains

In the blockchain world, consortium chains have always been marginalized outside of mainstream blockchains due to their centralization issues. However, among all public chains that exploded in 2021, there were no chains as decentralized as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Therefore, from this perspective, the return of consortium chains to mainstream blockchains in some form is only a matter of time.

Thus, the new hotspot in the blockchain world in the first half of 2022 became the new public chains Sui, Aptos, and Linera, developed by the original Libra blockchain team, which have completed financing and are valued at billions of dollars. They are still in the testing phase.

3.4 Epilogue

At some point in 2021, there seemed to be an illusion that Ethereum would be replaced by some new public chain.

The turning point appeared in 2021. A global movement against PoW mining emerged, with some countries aggressively deeming mining activities as violations and banning them, causing significant losses for both Bitcoin and Ethereum miners. However, this reduced the resistance to Ethereum's transition to PoS.

If the merge goes smoothly this week, Eth 2.0 will be here. The era of Ethereum is not over yet.

4. Conclusion

The history of blockchain evolution viewed through forks, new chains, and upgrades only reveals the tip of the iceberg of this ecosystem. The history of biological evolution proves that as long as there is constant change, survival opportunities can be secured, and this is continuously replayed in the evolution of blockchain.

This evolutionary history is also a survival history of blockchain, constantly undergoing changes and updates under internal and external pressures. There has always been controversy within the blockchain community about what blockchain should be, while the external political, economic, and technological environment has been shaping every aspect of blockchain. Like other things, blockchain oscillates between self-identity and survival pressure, and the ultimate choice will depend on the harshness of the external environment.

All history is contemporary history, so whenever we face significant historical junctures, we humans always like to look back at history. Soon we will welcome Ethereum's 2.0 merge upgrade. Just like the title of the second chapter, we do not know whether it is the gateway to a new era or Pandora's box. However, due to our inexplicable confidence in optimism and the realistic denial of all historical pessimistic expectations, we have always been rational optimists.

The people of this era witnessed the birth of blockchain and hope it can lead us into the next era.

Appendix 1: History of BTC Forked Coins (Source: https://forkdrop.io/)

• 2014.05.12 CLAMs CLAM

• 2015.03.30 Dalilcoin DLC

• 2015.03.30 Bitcoin Stake BTCS

• 2017.03.03 Qeditas QED

• 2017.08.01 Bitcoin Cash BCH

• 2017.08.01 Bitcoin SV BSV

• 2017.08.01 Bitcoin Clashic BCHC

• 2017.10.24 Bitcoin Gold BTG

• 2017.10.24 Bitcoin Coral BTCO

• 2017.11.02 BitCore BTX

• 2017.11.24 Bitcoin Diamond BCD

• 2017.12.11 Bitcoin@CBC BCBC

• 2017.12.12 BitcoinX BCX

• 2017.12.12 Super Bitcoin SBTC

• 2017.12.12 BitClassic Coin BICC

• 2017.12.12 Oil Bitcoin OBTC

• 2017.12.12 Bitcoin Hot BTH

• 2017.12.15 Bitcoin Pay BTP

• 2017.12.17 Bitcoin World BTW

• 2017.12.18 Bitcoin Wonder BCW

• 2017.12.18 Bitcoin Faith BTF

• 2017.12.18 Bitcoin King BCK

• 2017.12.26 Bitcoin Top BTT

• 2017.12.27 Bitcoin God God

• 2017.12.27 New Bitcoin NBTC

• 2017.12.27 Bitcoin File BIFI

• 2017.12.27 FastBitcoin FBTC

• 2017.12.28 Segwit2X B2X

• 2017.12.28 Quantum Bitcoin QBTC

• 2017.12.28 Bitcoin Cash Plus BCP

• 2017.12.29 Bitcoin Holocaust BTHOL

• 2017.12.31 Bitcoin Nano BN

• 2017.12.31 Bitcoin Pizza BPA

• 2017.12.31 Bitcoin Ore BCO

• 2018.01.02 Bitcoin Boy BCB

• 2018.01.12 Bitcoin Candy CDY

• 2018.01.12 World Bitcoin WBTC

• 2018.01.19 BitVote BTV

• 2018.01.19 Bitcoin Smart BCS

• 2018.01.20 Bitcoin Interest BCI

• 2018.01.24 Bitcoin Atom BCA

• 2018.01.25 Bitcoin Community BTSQ

• 2018.01.31 Bitcoin Parallel BCP

• 2018.01.31 Bitcoin Pro BTP

• 2018.02.01 Bitcoin Hush BTCH

• 2018.02.05 Bitcoin 2 BTC2

• 2018.02.12 Big Bitcoin BBC

• 2018.02.20 Bitcoin Cloud BCL

• 2018.02.28 Bitcoin Dollar BTD

• 2018.03.27 Bitcoin Lambo BTL

• 2018.04.01 ClassicBitcoin CBTC

• 2018.04.18 Bitcoin Clean BCL

• 2018.04.20 Smatt Bitcoin SBC

• 2018.04.29 Bitcoin Class BCS

• 2018.04.30 Fox BTC FBTC

• 2018.05.01 Bitcoin Metal BTCM

• 2018.05.17 Bitcoin Reference Line BRECO

• 2018.05.20 Bitcoin Core BTCC

• 2018.05.28 MicroBitcoin MBC

• 2018.06.30 Bitcoin Dao BTD

• 2018.08.21 Bitcoin RM BCRM

• 2018.11.15 Bitcoin Stash BSH

• 2018.11.22 Bitcoin Air XAP

• 2018.12.22 Bitcoin Post-Quantum BPQ

• 2018.12.28 Bithereum BTH

• 2019.01.04 BitcoinCash Zero BCZ

• 2019.05.14 Cereneum CER

• 2019.07.19 MimbleWimbleCoin MWC

References

The History of Bitcoin Forks (2009-2018)

Sasha Ivanov https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/62895584

Complete History of Bitcoin Consensus Forks

BitMex https://blog.bitmex.com/zh_cn-bitcoins-consensus-forks/

Vitalik Buterin "Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond"

Cardano

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardano(blockchainplatform)

Brief History of Ethereum Forks: https://www.ethereum.cn/the-history-of-ethereum-hard-forks