Appendix C: Major Events Timeline

Detailed timeline of blockchain development

Stage One: The Pre-Dawn Era (1970s - 2008)

1976: Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman published the paper "New Directions in Cryptography," proposing the concept of public-key cryptography.
1977: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman proposed the RSA encryption algorithm, making public-key cryptography practical.
1982: David Chaum introduced the concepts of eCash (electronic cash) and blind signatures.
1990: David Chaum founded DigiCash company.
1993: Eric Hughes published "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto."
1994: Nick Szabo first proposed the concept of "smart contracts."
1997: Adam Back invented Hashcash, the predecessor to Proof of Work (PoW).
1998: Wei Dai released the b-money concept.
1998: Nick Szabo designed the Bit Gold system.
1998: DigiCash company declared bankruptcy.

2008.10.31: Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper on the cryptography mailing list.
2009.01.03: Satoshi Nakamoto mined Bitcoin's genesis block, officially launching the Bitcoin network.
2009.01.12: The first Bitcoin transaction in history occurred, with Satoshi Nakamoto sending 10 bitcoins to Hal Finney.
2010.05.22: Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins, known as "Bitcoin Pizza Day," marking Bitcoin's first real-world price discovery.
2010.07: Mt. Gox exchange was established.
2010.12: Satoshi Nakamoto posted his last message in the community before gradually fading away and disappearing.
2011.02: Bitcoin price reached $1 for the first time.
2011.06: WikiLeaks began accepting Bitcoin donations.
2011.10: Litecoin was released, becoming one of Bitcoin's earliest competitors.

2013.11: Vitalik Buterin published the Ethereum whitepaper.
2014.02: Mt. Gox exchange declared bankruptcy due to hacking attacks, triggering a severe market crisis.
2014.07: The Ethereum project completed its crowdfunding through ICO, raising over $18 million.
2015.07.30: Ethereum mainnet "Frontier" version officially launched.
2016.06: The DAO, an Ethereum-based crowdfunding project, was attacked, resulting in the theft of approximately $50 million worth of ETH.
2016.07: To recover The DAO losses, the Ethereum community voted to implement a hard fork, causing it to split into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

2017: The ICO (Initial Coin Offering) phenomenon exploded, with annual funding exceeding $5 billion, as the cryptocurrency market entered a frenzied bull run.
2017.08.01: Bitcoin underwent a hard fork, giving birth to Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
2017.09.04: The People's Bank of China and seven other ministries jointly issued an announcement, completely banning ICO and cryptocurrency exchange operations.
2017.12: Bitcoin price reached a historic high of nearly $20,000.
2017.12: CryptoKitties game launched, attracting massive attention and temporarily congesting the Ethereum network.
2018: Cryptocurrency market bubble burst, entering a "crypto winter" lasting over a year, with most token prices falling more than 90%.

2020.06: Compound protocol launched "liquidity mining," igniting "DeFi Summer."
2020: Decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap experienced explosive growth in trading volume and total value locked (TVL).
2020.12: Public companies like MicroStrategy and Tesla began adopting Bitcoin as corporate treasury assets.
2021.03: Digital artist Beeple's NFT artwork sold for $69.3 million at Christie's auction house, bringing NFTs into mainstream consciousness.
2021.09: The Republic of El Salvador officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first sovereign nation to do so.
2021.11: Bitcoin price reached a new all-time high of approximately $69,000.

2021.10: Facebook announced its rebranding to Meta, fully betting on the metaverse and igniting related concepts.
2022.05: Algorithmic stablecoin project Terra (UST) and its token LUNA collapsed, triggering market chain reactions and bankrupting multiple crypto institutions.
2022.09.15: Ethereum completed "The Merge," officially transitioning its consensus mechanism from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
2022.11: FTX, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, declared bankruptcy, founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested, severely damaging industry credibility.
2023.06: The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) officially took effect, becoming the world's first comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto assets.

2024.01: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially approved the first Bitcoin spot ETFs for trading.
2024 - 2025: Layer 2 solutions (particularly ZK-Rollups) technology matured, becoming the mainstream solution for Ethereum scalability issues.
2024 - 2025: Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization became a new industry hotspot, with traditional financial giants accelerating their deployment.
2025: Cross-chain interoperability protocols (such as LayerZero, CCIP) gained widespread adoption, forming the initial framework for multi-chain interconnectivity.