Throughout its existence, blockchain has been demonstrating an explosive growth. It developed from just an idea in 1991 to the self-contained market estimated at more than $325 billion at its best times. Let’s take a look at the timeline to track its highlights.
The concept of a secured chain of blocks first appeared in the minds of two people, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, in 1991. They wanted to create a solution that would timestamp data and protect it from forging or deleting.
A person or a group of people under the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto went further. In 2008, they created the first blockchain that later was used as the ground for bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency. Exactly this event gave a further boost to blockchain as an autonomous technology.
During the next nine years, everything connected to blockchain got into an ever-faster flow of events and created a rush of interest in this technology. As of October 12, 2017, Deloitte Insights estimated the number of blockchain projects published to GitHub to be at 86,034.
However, this incredible number of Dapps says nothing about their quality. A lot of teams just decentralize non-distributed solutions but do nothing with their further promotion. As a result, according to the same source, only 5% of all Dapps are expected to survive, whereas the average lifetime of blockchain-backed applications is estimated to be only 1.22 years.
This period is characterized also by a high abandonment rate: only 8% of all Dapps are properly maintained.
The unbelievable growth of bitcoin in 2017 attracted an enormous number of onlookers. On the December 16, 2017, the blockchain market capitalization peaked at over $325 billion, which was a unique case in the entire history of blockchain.
The success of bitcoin added fuel to the cryptocurrency development. However, the application of the technology went beyond this, addressing more goals as well. The hype stimulated Dapp developers to create more and more blockchain-powered solutions within different realms, which also fostered the development of the blockchain infrastructure.
Riding this wave of hype, the developers of the EOS blockchain ecosystem carried out the most successful ICO campaign ever. During one year, from June 2017 till June 2018, they raised as much as $4.1 billion. At the same time, the average funding raised during ICOs in 2017 was estimated at $1 million.
The number of Dapps continues growing. More enterprises create their own blockchain solutions for their internal needs. However, the number of those designing Dapps for external use and fundraising through ICO is increasing, too. In October 2018, there were almost 1,000 blockchain-powered applications distributing their tokens.
Although Ethereum remains the most popular ecosystem for Dapp development, more platforms are coming. For instance, genEOS is one of the promising examples. It helps ecosystem participants to focus on the business side of things instead of building a new blockchain for their needs. Developers can just adopt the powerful toolkit provided by genEOS and build their Dapp on top of the existing blockchain.
During the last 10 years, from the creation of the first blockchain to these days, the technology transitioned from being little known to the one recognized by everyone.
More and more people embrace cryptocurrencies, while businesses adopt blockchain to increase security and traceability of their data. What will be the next leap taken by blockchain? Let’s grab more popcorn and watch — or seize the opportunities provided by blockchain and change its course.
