Explain the Evolution of Blockchain Technology in the Last 10 years, from 2011–2021

5 min readOct 13, 2021

As more and more people are getting familiar with the term “blockchain”, the curiosity to know when and how it came into existence is increasing. You might be surprised to learn that blockchain technology is a concept of the year 9091 when W. Scott Stornetta and Stuart Haber came up with the idea of blockchain. They were working on creating a cryptographically secured chain of blocks in which not a single entity can make any kinds of changes in document records.

However, the absolute praise this technology received was in 2008 when developers came across the whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of blockchain. Though Satoshi is an unknown entity, many core developers came together to bring this idea into reality with his whitepaper insights. And, now, the blockchain invention is taking over the world by storm.

Let us see the detailed evolution of blockchain over the last ten years:

Evolution of blockchain from 2011 to 2014
2013–2015: establishments of new blockchain platforms
Blockchain going mainstream from 2016–2021
Closing Thoughts

Evolution of blockchain from 2011 to 2014

A bitcoin transaction is the most popular application of blockchain; however, in 2011, a minting of around ¼ of 21 million bitcoins took place. Moreover, till February of 2011, bitcoin worth was equivalent to the value of U.S dollars. Not only this, bitcoin was going parallel in value with the British pound and Euro. However, there was an attack on the blockchain platform, causing a drop in bitcoin’s worth as there was a sudden stoppage in the trading process over the blockchain network. Later in the year, Litecoin came into existence as an alternative to bitcoin, both run over the blockchain.

2012

By the year 2012, bitcoin and litecoin transactions over blockchain were more established. Due to the faster currency transactions over this new technology, the bitcoin price enjoyed a rise of over 5 million dollars. Further, there was an establishment of a bitcoin foundation to draw in more users. There was a rise in the development of multiple blockchain-based crypto exchange protocols like open coin and Ripple giving data of real-time payments.

2013–2015: establishments of new blockchain platforms

2013

Despite the continuous rise in the value of cryptocurrencies, there were many obstacles as major countries like Thailand and China pulled off their support for cryptocurrency. However, they have still been showing their interest in blockchain development and implementation. Furthermore, due to high-bitcoin circulation, its market cap reached more than 5 billion dollars being the cause of the establishment of the bitcoin ATM.

2014

Further, in 2014, the crypto community witnessed the development of one of the popular blockchain platforms: Ethereum. Ethereum is the reason that multiple decentralized applications of blockchain came to the surface other than trading cryptos. This year was important for blockchain as national financial institutions and various businesses began to recognize the significance of blockchain in the financial industry.

2015

With the launch of the Ethereum Frontier network in 2015, any blockchain developer could write smart contracts. In addition to this, Dapps were all set to get an implementation on a live network. Back in the year, Ethereum was about to become the most prominent app of blockchain.

Some of the other crucial developments were the launch of Hyperledger blockchain by Linux, multiple banks joining hands to create an R3 consortium, etc.

Blockchain going mainstream from 2016–2021

The period between 2016 to 2021 is a speedy development phase of the blockchain. Also, it has its fair share of ups and downs:

2016

The blockchain system received global acceptance as a single concept. Further, there was an establishment of the Hyperledger project and Chamber of Digital Commerce in order to solidify industry education and advocacy. Unfortunately, exploitation of a bug gave rise to the hard fork of the Ethereum network. The bug enabled the exploitation of Ethereum decentralized autonomous organization code.

2017

Starting the year with the highest record value of bitcoin of around 20,000 dollars. In 2017, prominent countries like Japan passed the bill for making cryptocurrency legal tender. Next, up to seven European financial institutions took part to form the Digital Trade Chain consortium.

The reason to do this was to build a blockchain-based trade finance platform.

Later there was an introduction of the EOS blockchain operating framework. It was built to back all the decentralized commercial apps. Within the same year, around 155 worldwide banks started using blockchain technology with its full potential.

2018

2018 was a ten-year mark for bitcoin. However, it was not a good year for its business as its value was continuously dropping. In 2018, it was only 3,800 dollars. Furthermore, many online payment organizations were pulling away from taking bitcoin as payment. Even big business giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google banned crypto ads. On the other hand, blockchain was getting mass acceptance; in fact, South Korea made millions of dollars of investment in blockchain solutions. Additionally, 2018 was the year of the Blockchain Observatory and Forum launch.

2019

Commercial platforms like Walmart started using the Hyperledger platform for its supply chain purposes. Additionally, Amazon managing blockchain service on AWS became a thing. Transactions over Ethereum were almost 1 million each day. In 2019 multiple initiatives took place for blockchain development as organizations were embracing real-world use cases of decentralized applications.

2020–2021

As per a survey by Deloitte, between 2020 and 2021, approximately 40% of respondents integrated blockchain technology into the production process. Moreover, 55% perceived blockchain platforms as a priority for their business strategies.

Closing Thoughts

Throughout these ten years, there has always been an increasing interest in employing blockchain for business applications. In fact, today, this trend is thriving as governments and businesses are expecting blockchain to come up with a variety of use cases. This involves real-estate trading, voting, health care record management, the internet of things, and others.

Learn blockchain in detail at the BLOCKCHAIN COUNCIL. Enroll in the various certifications available on the platform.