Crypto history
2015: Ethereum makes shared computation a public service
Frontier expanded the blockchain model from a payment history into a platform for programmes and persistent state.
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The launch
Ethereum's Frontier network launched on 30 July 2015. The Foundation's contemporary announcement described the genesis block and the first live release. Rather than limiting the shared system to a payment ledger, Ethereum let developers deploy programmes whose execution and state changes could be checked by participating nodes.
Gas made computation an explicit paid resource. Contracts could hold balances, maintain records and call other contracts, enabling tokens, marketplaces and financial applications to share the same settlement environment. This widened what a public blockchain could do, while giving software errors a direct route to money.
A new application risk
An ordinary website bug can display the wrong number; a contract bug can permit an irreversible transfer. Application developers also retained choices about upgrade keys, frontends and administrative privileges. Using Ethereum did not automatically remove those powers.
The DAO incident followed in 2016 and exposed how an application failure could force a network-wide social decision. The sequence matters: a general-purpose execution platform made new products possible before mature practices for reviewing and operating them existed. Read contract state and proxy upgrades to understand what later products added to that original model.