2013-2018: Ethereum and the first revolution of Web3

Ethereum was first proposed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a programmer who was a member of the bitcoin community. He once advocated to the core developers of bitcoin that the bitcoin platform should have a more sophisticated programming language for program development but did not get their consent. That was when he decided to develop a new platform for this purpose: 88. Buterin believes that many programs can achieve further development with the principle similar to bitcoin. In 2013, he wrote the Ethereum Whitepaper to explain the goal of building decentralized programs. In 2014, he got the finance for development through online fundraising. Investors bought Ethereum from the foundation with their bitcoins.As the core feature of Ethereum, a smart contract is applied to various blockchain platforms. Its main developers include Gavin wood, Christian Reitwiessner, Alex Beregszaszi, Liana Husikyan, Yoichi Hirai, and several other early core contributors of Ethereum. Solidity enables program developers to write smart contracts on blockchains (such as Ethereum).

Initial Coin Offering (ICO), also known as initial token selling and blockchain crowdfunding, is a way of financing projects of developing, maintaining, and exchanging related products or services by combining the use right and cryptocurrency with blockchain. ICO evolved from the term IPO (initial public offering) used for securities. Mastercoin is the first ICO issued in 2013, known as the venture capital revolution. Since 2016, ICO has gained popularity globally. There are at least 18 websites providing ICO issuing news and forums.The prevalence of ICO has pushed the price of bitcoin and Ethereum to a historic peak. As the market bubble is basically composed of blockchains and tokens, this stage is called "the first revolution of Web3" by post-AA historians.