Blockchain Major Events Timeline

A chronological reference list of the milestones that shaped blockchain history. Entries are grouped by era and run from the cryptographic research of the 1970s through July 2026.

Cryptographic Foundations (1976 - 2007)

• 1976: Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish "New Directions in Cryptography," introducing public-key cryptography
• 1977: Rivest, Shamir and Adleman publish the RSA algorithm, making public-key cryptography practical
• 1982: David Chaum proposes blind signatures and the eCash concept for untraceable digital payments
• 1990: David Chaum founds DigiCash in Amsterdam to commercialize electronic cash
• 1991: Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta publish "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document," the first cryptographically chained ledger
• 1992: Haber, Stornetta and Dave Bayer add Merkle trees to timestamping, allowing many documents per block
• 1993: Eric Hughes publishes "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto," declaring privacy essential for an open society
• 1994: Nick Szabo coins the term "smart contract" for self-executing agreements
• 1997: Adam Back invents Hashcash, an anti-spam proof-of-work scheme later cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper
• 1998: Wei Dai publishes b-money, describing a distributed anonymous electronic cash system
• 1998: Nick Szabo designs Bit Gold, combining proof-of-work with a decentralized property title registry
• 1998: DigiCash files for bankruptcy, ending the first commercial digital cash experiment
• 2004: Hal Finney creates Reusable Proofs of Work (RPOW), a direct technical predecessor to Bitcoin

Bitcoin's Birth and Early Years (2008 - 2012)

• 2008.10.31: Satoshi Nakamoto publishes the Bitcoin whitepaper to the Cryptography mailing list
• 2009.01.03: The Bitcoin genesis block is mined, embedding a headline about bank bailouts
• 2009.01.12: The first Bitcoin transaction sends 10 BTC from Satoshi Nakamoto to Hal Finney
• 2010.05.22: Laszlo Hanyecz buys two pizzas for 10,000 BTC, later celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day
• 2010.07: The Mt. Gox exchange begins operating as a Bitcoin marketplace
• 2010.12: Satoshi Nakamoto posts publicly for the last time and withdraws from the project
• 2011.02: Bitcoin reaches parity with the US dollar for the first time
• 2011-2013: The Silk Road darknet marketplace operates using Bitcoin as its only payment method
• 2011.10: Litecoin launches as one of the earliest Bitcoin alternatives
• 2012.11.28: The first Bitcoin halving cuts the block subsidy from 50 BTC to 25 BTC at block 210,000

Ethereum and the Smart Contract Era (2013 - 2016)

• 2013.11: Vitalik Buterin publishes the Ethereum whitepaper, proposing a programmable blockchain
• 2014.02: Mt. Gox halts withdrawals and collapses, having lost roughly 850,000 BTC
• 2014.07: Ethereum's public token sale raises over $18 million worth of Bitcoin
• 2015.07.30: The Ethereum mainnet launches with the Frontier release
• 2015.11: The ERC-20 token standard is proposed, becoming the template for tokens on Ethereum
• 2016.01: The Lightning Network paper is finalized, describing off-chain payment channels for Bitcoin
• 2016.06: The DAO is drained of roughly 3.6 million ETH through a reentrancy vulnerability
• 2016.07: Ethereum hard forks to reverse the DAO theft, splitting the chain into ETH and Ethereum Classic
• 2016.07.09: The second Bitcoin halving reduces the block subsidy from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC
• 2016.10: Zcash launches, bringing zk-SNARK shielded transactions to a public blockchain

ICO Boom and Regulatory Awakening (2017 - 2018)

• 2017: The ICO boom raises billions of dollars for token projects with little regulatory oversight
• 2017.08.01: Bitcoin Cash forks away from Bitcoin after years of block size disputes
• 2017.08: SegWit activates on Bitcoin, fixing transaction malleability and enabling the Lightning Network
• 2017.09: China bans ICOs and orders domestic cryptocurrency exchanges to shut down
• 2017.12: Bitcoin approaches $20,000 as retail speculation peaks; CryptoKitties congests Ethereum
• 2018: The crypto winter begins, with most tokens losing over 90% of their value

DeFi, NFTs and Institutional Entry (2019 - 2021)

• 2019.06: Facebook announces the Libra stablecoin project, drawing immediate regulatory opposition
• 2020.05.11: The third Bitcoin halving reduces the block subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC
• 2020.06: Compound launches liquidity mining, igniting DeFi Summer
• 2020.08: MicroStrategy adopts Bitcoin as a corporate treasury reserve asset
• 2020.12.01: Ethereum's Beacon Chain goes live, starting the transition to proof of stake
• 2021.02: Tesla discloses a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase
• 2021.03: Beeple's NFT sells for $69.3 million at Christie's, pushing NFTs into mainstream culture
• 2021.09: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender, the first country to do so
• 2021.11: Bitcoin peaks near $69,000; Taproot activates, improving Bitcoin privacy and scripting
• 2021-2023: Layer 2 rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync) mature into Ethereum's main scaling path

Collapse, Recovery and Regulation (2022 - 2023)

• 2022.05: Terra's UST stablecoin depegs and LUNA collapses, erasing tens of billions in value
• 2022.08.08: OFAC sanctions the Tornado Cash mixer, the first sanctions against autonomous smart contracts
• 2022.09.15: Ethereum completes The Merge, switching from proof of work to proof of stake
• 2022.11: FTX collapses into bankruptcy, triggering an industry-wide credit contraction
• 2023.01.21: Casey Rodarmor launches the Ordinals protocol, enabling inscriptions on individual satoshis
• 2023.03: A pseudonymous developer known as Domo creates the BRC-20 standard for Bitcoin fungible tokens
• 2023.04.12: The Shapella upgrade enables staked ETH withdrawals, completing Ethereum's proof-of-stake transition
• 2023.06.14: EigenLayer launches its first mainnet stage, introducing restaking to Ethereum
• 2023.06.29: The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) enters into force
• 2023.11: Binance settles with US authorities for $4.3 billion; CZ steps down as CEO

Institutional Adoption and the ETF Era (2024)

• 2024.01: The SEC approves spot Bitcoin ETFs, which begin trading on 11 January
• 2024.03.13: Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduces blobs (EIP-4844), sharply cutting Layer 2 fees
• 2024.04.09: EigenLayer opens Actively Validated Services on mainnet, formalizing shared security
• 2024.04.20: The fourth Bitcoin halving cuts the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC at block 840,000
• 2024.07.23: Spot Ether ETFs begin trading in the United States
• 2024.11.26: The Fifth Circuit rules in Van Loon that immutable smart contracts are not sanctionable property
• 2024.12: Bitcoin trades above $100,000 for the first time
• 2024.12.30: MiCA becomes fully applicable across the EU for crypto-asset service providers

Policy Shift and Cycle Peak (2025)

• 2025.02.21: Bybit loses roughly $1.5 billion to North Korea-linked attackers, the largest crypto theft on record
• 2025.03.06: Executive Order 14233 establishes the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
• 2025.03.21: The US Treasury removes Tornado Cash from the sanctions list
• 2025.05.07: Ethereum's Pectra upgrade raises validator limits and adds account abstraction features
• 2025.06.17: The US Senate passes the GENIUS Act, the first federal stablecoin framework
• 2025.07.17: The House passes both the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act market structure bill
• 2025.07.18: The GENIUS Act is signed into law as Public Law 119-27
• 2025.08.06: Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm is convicted on one count of unlicensed money transmitting
• 2025.08.24: Ether reaches an all-time high near $4,950, breaking its November 2021 record
• 2025.09.17: The SEC approves generic listing standards, opening the door to a wave of altcoin ETPs
• 2025.10.06: Bitcoin peaks at roughly $126,200, the highest price in its history
• 2025.10.10: A record liquidation cascade wipes out over $19 billion in leveraged positions in 24 hours
• 2025.12.03: Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade activates PeerDAS, scaling blob capacity for rollups

The Current Cycle (2026)

• 2026.01.07: The second Blob Parameter Only fork raises Ethereum's blob target and maximum again
• 2026.02: A sharp sell-off drives Bitcoin down roughly 18% in a single day, its worst since November 2022
• 2026.04: Exploits at Drift Protocol and KelpDAO cost roughly $285 million and $292 million respectively
• 2026.06.01: The Senate Banking Committee advances the CLARITY Act with amendments
• 2026.07.01: MiCA's transitional grandfathering period ends across the EU
• 2026.07: The CLARITY Act stalls without a Senate floor vote before the August recess
• 2026 H2: Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade, headlined by enshrined proposer-builder separation, is targeted for mainnet
• ~2028.04: The fifth Bitcoin halving is projected at block 1,050,000, reducing the subsidy to 1.5625 BTC