The cryptocurrency community is celebrating the fact that ethereum miners have hit a huge milestone of 10 million blocks since the cryptocurrency’s inception.
On Monday, the second-largest blockchain in the world, ethereum, mined its 10 millionth block.
Ethereum’s 10 Millionth Block Took 1,740 Days To Mine
Ethereum’s history commences a little over five years ago. Within that short period of time, it has managed to generate 10 million blocks. At exactly 1:22 PM UTC on May 4, the 10 millionth block was effectively mined, according to data from Etherscan.
On-chain market intelligence firm, Glassnode observed that this development took exactly 1,740 days.
— glassnode (@glassnode) May 4, 2020
#Ethereum's 10 millionth block was mined today.
This took 1,740 days.
Here's how long it took Ethereum to reach other '10 million' on–chain milestonespic.twitter.com/Giq3pZvn8a
As per a recent Medium post by Luit Hollander, the 10 million blocks were mined by computing over 15 zettahashes over the years. To put this into perspective, a modern graphics card such as GTC 1080 Ti would take at least 150 million years to do the same.
The bitcoin blockchain, on the other hand, has mined well over 600,000 blocks since the cryptocurrency’s birth in 2009. This is remarkably lower than ethereum due to bitcoin’s slower block time. While new blocks on the ethereum network are produced every 10 or 20 seconds, the bitcoin network has an average block time of 10 minutes.
Ethereum was founded back in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin and others including Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson. The idea they had in mind was to create a decentralized global digital computer that can execute smart contracts. Put more simply, Ethereum’s vision is to become the world computer that nobody can shut down at will.
What Next?
With the 10 millionth block mined, the ethereum community is looking forward to achieving more such developmental milestones. The ethereum network is expected to shift to ETH 2.0, dubbed Serenity sometime in July. This upgrade will transition the network to a new security model under Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
The ethereum network has become synonymous with constant congestion, where transaction times become super slow and transaction fees go through the roof. ETH 2.0 promises better scalability and sharding, and these challenges currently affecting the ethereum network will likely be a memory of the past.
