A book you can run

Ethereum, from scratch

One book, read in order. Part I designs the machine from a shared spreadsheet up to a programmable world computer; Part II shows it running; Part III walks every consequential upgrade in the order it shipped. Every chapter derives its idea from a concrete problem, carried by animations built to explain — not decorate.

Part I

Designing the machine

Build Ethereum from a shared spreadsheet up to a programmable, staked world computer — inventing each piece the moment you feel its absence.

Part II

Running it

The live clockwork: how a million validators with no leader agree every twelve seconds, how a fresh node catches up, and how clients actually keep the state on disk.

Part III

The upgrades, in order

Every consequential change to Ethereum, in the order it shipped — each one a problem the network hit, derived to its fix.

Homestead Mar 2016

7 EIP-7: DELEGATECALL — borrow the code, keep your context Contracts wanted to reuse a shared library's logic without copy-pasting its bytecode into every one. But a normal CALL runs that logic in the library's own storage — useless for a library that's supposed to work on your data. DELEGATECALL runs borrowed code in the caller's context, and in doing so it quietly invented libraries, proxies, and upgradeable contracts. 11min

Tangerine Whistle Oct 2016

8 EIP-150: when gas became a security parameter In 2016 an attacker discovered that Ethereum's most expensive operations — reading storage, loading accounts — were priced far below what they actually cost a node. A few cheap transactions could grind every node on Earth to a crawl. EIP-150 repriced them, and in doing so turned gas from a nominal fee into a line of defense. 10min

Spurious Dragon Nov 2016

9 EIP-155: binding a signature to its chain A pre-155 Ethereum signature said who signed and what they signed — but never which network it was for. So the exact same signed bytes were valid on every chain that shared your address, and a transaction could be replayed across a fork like ETH/ETC. EIP-155 folds a chainId into what you sign, so a signature is locked to one chain. 10min

Byzantium Oct 2017

Constantinople Feb 2019

Istanbul Dec 2019

Berlin Apr 2021

London Aug 2021

Altair Oct 2021

25 Altair: sync committees, or how a phone verifies Ethereum Proof-of-stake is secured by hundreds of thousands of validators — wonderful for security, hopeless for a light client that can't track them all. Altair adds a sync committee: a small, rotating group of 512 validators that signs each block, so a resource-limited client verifies one aggregate signature instead of a million attestations. It's what makes trustless light clients — and the bridges built on them — possible. 10min

Paris · The Merge Sep 2022

Shanghai · Capella Apr 2023

Application layer 2023

31 EIP-4337: account abstraction without touching the protocol EOAs are rigid: one key, gas only in ETH, one action at a time. Account abstraction makes accounts programmable — and EIP-4337 pulls it off with zero consensus changes, using a higher-layer transaction, a separate mempool, bundlers, and a singleton EntryPoint. 14min

Cancun · Deneb Mar 2024

Prague · Electra May 2025

Fulu · Osaka (Fusaka) Dec 2025

43 EIP-7594: PeerDAS, blob data without downloading it all Blobs made rollup data cheap — but every node still downloaded every blob, so throughput couldn't grow. Derive PeerDAS one fix at a time: erasure-code each blob, split it into columns, custody a slice, and sample the rest until absence is a near-impossibility. 12min

Every fork, every EIP

Ethereum's whole upgrade history, newest first. Highlighted EIPs open a full explorable; the rest link to the spec.

Osaka CL · Fulu Dec 2025

Fusaka: PeerDAS lets nodes sample blob data instead of downloading all of it, and blob-parameter-only (BPO) forks raise capacity between full upgrades.

EIP-7594 PeerDAS — data availability sampling EIP-7823 Upper bounds for MODEXP EIP-7825 Transaction gas limit cap EIP-7883 ModExp gas cost increase EIP-7892 Blob-parameter-only (BPO) forks EIP-7917 Deterministic proposer lookahead EIP-7918 Blob base fee bounded by execution cost EIP-7934 RLP execution block size limit EIP-7939 CLZ opcode (count leading zeros) EIP-7951 secp256r1 precompile
Prague · Electra CL · Electra May 2025

Pectra: EOAs run code (7702), validators hold up to 2048 ETH, EL-triggerable requests.

EIP-2537 BLS12-381 precompiles EIP-2935 Historical block hashes in state EIP-6110 On-chain validator deposits EIP-7002 EL-triggerable withdrawals EIP-7251 Increase MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE EIP-7549 Move committee index out of attestation EIP-7623 Increase calldata cost EIP-7685 General-purpose EL requests EIP-7691 Blob throughput increase EIP-7702 Set EOA account code EIP-7840 Blob schedule in EL config
Cancun · Deneb CL · Deneb Mar 2024

Blobs cut rollup costs ~10×; transient storage; the beacon root in the EVM.

EIP-1153 Transient storage (TSTORE/TLOAD) EIP-4788 Beacon block root in the EVM EIP-4844 Blob transactions (proto-danksharding) EIP-5656 MCOPY instruction EIP-6780 SELFDESTRUCT only same-tx EIP-7044 Perpetually valid voluntary exits EIP-7045 Wider attestation inclusion EIP-7514 Max epoch churn limit EIP-7516 BLOBBASEFEE opcode
Shanghai · Capella CL · Capella Apr 2023

Staked ETH can finally be withdrawn; PUSH0 lands.

EIP-3651 Warm COINBASE EIP-3855 PUSH0 instruction EIP-3860 Limit and meter initcode EIP-4895 Beacon-chain push withdrawals EIP-6049 Deprecate SELFDESTRUCT (warn)
Paris · The Merge CL · Bellatrix Sep 2022

Proof-of-work is switched off; the beacon chain takes over.

EIP-3675 Upgrade to proof-of-stake EIP-4399 DIFFICULTY → PREVRANDAO
Gray Glacier Jun 2022

The last bomb delay before the Merge.

EIP-5133 Difficulty bomb delay
Arrow Glacier Dec 2021

Single-purpose: difficulty bomb delay.

EIP-4345 Difficulty bomb delay
Altair Oct 2021

First beacon-chain upgrade: sync committees, light clients.

Sync committees · light-client support
London Aug 2021

The fee market is rebuilt: a base fee, and a burn.

EIP-1559 Fee market change (base fee + burn) EIP-3198 BASEFEE opcode EIP-3529 Reduction in gas refunds EIP-3541 Reject contracts starting 0xEF EIP-3554 Difficulty bomb delay
Berlin Apr 2021

Gas-access repricing and the typed-transaction envelope.

EIP-2565 ModExp gas cost EIP-2718 Typed transaction envelope EIP-2929 Gas increases for state access EIP-2930 Optional access lists
Beacon Chain CL · Phase 0 Dec 2020

Proof-of-stake genesis — runs in parallel, no execution yet.

Beacon chain / PoS genesis
Muir Glacier Jan 2020

Single-purpose: push back the difficulty bomb.

EIP-2384 Difficulty bomb delay
Istanbul Dec 2019

Repricings, cheaper calldata, and the CHAINID opcode.

EIP-152 Blake2 precompile EIP-1108 Cheaper alt_bn128 EIP-1344 CHAINID opcode EIP-1884 Reprice trie-size-dependent ops EIP-2028 Cheaper calldata EIP-2200 Rebalanced SSTORE metering
Petersburg Feb 2019

Shipped with Constantinople; pulled EIP-1283 over reentrancy risk.

EIP-1283 Removed (reentrancy concern)
Constantinople Feb 2019

Metropolis part two — CREATE2 and cheaper bit-ops.

EIP-145 Bitwise shifting (SHL/SHR/SAR) EIP-1014 CREATE2 EIP-1052 EXTCODEHASH EIP-1234 Difficulty bomb delay + 2 ETH reward EIP-1283 SSTORE net gas metering
Byzantium Oct 2017

Metropolis part one — privacy precompiles and REVERT.

EIP-100 Average-block-time difficulty EIP-140 REVERT instruction EIP-196 alt_bn128 add/mul precompiles EIP-197 alt_bn128 pairing precompile EIP-198 Big-integer modexp EIP-211 RETURNDATASIZE / RETURNDATACOPY EIP-214 STATICCALL EIP-649 Difficulty bomb delay + 3 ETH reward EIP-658 Transaction status in receipts
Spurious Dragon Nov 2016

Replay protection and state-trie clearing after the DoS.

EIP-155 Simple replay protection (chainId) EIP-160 EXP cost increase EIP-161 State-trie clearing EIP-170 Contract code-size limit
Tangerine Whistle Oct 2016

Emergency gas repricing after the 2016 DoS attacks.

EIP-150 Gas repricing for IO-heavy ops
Homestead Mar 2016

First planned upgrade; the network leaves beta.

EIP-2 Homestead consensus changes EIP-7 DELEGATECALL EIP-8 devp2p forward compatibility
Frontier Jul 2015

Mainnet genesis — a bare, mining-only chain.

On the workbench

The path is being built deliberately, not dumped. Next mechanisms in the queue:

The mempool & the EIP-1559 fee market
The EVM: stack, memory, storage & a live opcode stepper
Gas & metering: what every instruction costs
Blocks, validation & the state transition
Consensus: Proof of Stake, finality & fork choice
Blobs (EIP-4844), statelessness & rollups
Node sync: full, snap, light & checkpoint