Block 1 - The Ethereum Frontier

Data art from Ethereum block 1 (The Ethereum Frontier). A collaboration between generative artist HEX0x6C (digital layer coded in Processing) and visual artist Chiara Braidotti (hand drawing on top of) for a (forthcoming) Virtual Reality museum telling the history of Ethereum through art.

The beginning: a catalyst that would inspire some of the greatest technological advances of the modern era. A pioneering project, as it were, Ethereum was considered by many as a key element of building the next iteration of the web. It would allow anyone access to a new type of public utility: a global virtual machine which could be used by anyone to interact with other people and with digital money, all simply by writing code defining the nature of the interactions. This would enable new ways for people to organize and would remove the need to trust other parties in many cases.

After a few months of testing, the first mainnet, Frontier, was publicly released on July 30th 2015, when the first clients consented to the network via the genesis block. In the early days it provided a decentralized, distributed platform for application development - but unfortunately very few development tools existed. New features and improvements to the friendliness of the platform would be implemented throughout the following years.

The early users - who participated in the Ethereum presale, and, above all, performed Ethereum mining, building, and testing of smart contracts - were utterly passionate about the technology. Ethereum introduced a brave new world of discovery and innovation.

This block is where it all began: it is the first block with a miner and is preceded only by the Genesis block #0.