Ethereum, created by Vitalik Buterin in 2013, represents a major innovation in blockchain beyond Bitcoin, focusing on running smart contracts. It officially launched in 2015, introducing features that allow for decentralized applications (DApps) and autonomous organization through its native token, Ether (ETH).

A key historical moment was the 2016 "DAO" incident, where a hack led to a significant theft of funds, resulting in a controversial split of the Ethereum blockchain into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). Ethereum has also pioneered the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) movement and the popularization of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Facing scalability issues, Ethereum is transitioning to Ethereum 2.0, aiming to implement a proof-of-stake consensus and sharding to improve performance.