From its mainnet launch on July 30, 2015, to July 30, 2025, Ethereum has celebrated its 10th anniversary. Compared to Bitcoin's decade, Ethereum's ten years have perhaps been filled with even more mixed emotions for those in the cryptocurrency community. If Bitcoin is the anchor of the cryptocurrency world, then Ethereum is undoubtedly the industry's bellwether. Precisely because of this, as the primary platform for crypto applications, the impact of Ethereum's changes goes far beyond price fluctuations on paper; instead, they reflect the rise and fall of the industry. In other words, compared to Bitcoin's "hold," Ethereum's core principle is "build." The dream of a global computer set sail, and now, it has become a behemoth that is difficult to dismantle. Looking back over the past decade, perhaps it's not just Ethereum that has grown, but also everyone in the cryptocurrency community who has experienced its ups and downs. The Journey Begins: Genesis, Hard Forks, and ICOs Fast forward to 2011. Vitalik Buterin was just an ordinary 17-year-old Russian-Canadian teenager. Like many other teenagers, he happily landed a job writing for a website called Bitcoin Weekly, earning 5 bitcoins per article. From a writer to the founder of Bitcoin Magazine, Vitalik seemed to miss being a developer. Two years later, as the market was reeling from Bitcoin's surge, the teenager, while traveling in San Francisco, had a sudden thought: What if he could develop a programmable blockchain network? Initially, Vitalik had no intention of developing a new platform. Instead, he repeatedly wrote to Bitcoin core developers advocating for it. However, these emails fell on deaf ears. This seemingly crazy idea quickly took over his mind. Execution is the ladder that propels human progress. Despite having only a brilliant idea, Vitalik quickly completed a first draft of the Ethereum white paper and shared the concept with friends via email. While the plan might have been met with scorn from Bitcoin enthusiasts, it unexpectedly garnered recognition from peers, and soon, like-minded individuals began to gather. Vitalik initially selected five co-founders: Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, and Amir Chetrit. Later, in early 2014, three developers—Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke—joined the team, formally known by the market as the "Eight Kings." The spark of technology began to ignite from this moment. 2014 was a devastating year for the cryptocurrency community. The Mentougou incident shattered faith in Bitcoin and cast a severe shadow over the value of cryptocurrencies. It was also that year that the idealistic Vitalik faced his first lifelong value dilemma. The eight co-founders debated endlessly over the future of Ethereum. One faction advocated a Silicon Valley approach, investing in venture capital and transitioning to an enterprise. The other, steadfast in their decentralization ideals, believed that non-profit organizations could truly realize their beliefs. The outcome is well known: Vitalik opted for a non-profit path, which also led to the disintegration of the co-founders. By the end of the year, only Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Mihai Alisie, and Jeffrey Wilcke remained. Sixteen years later, all of the co-founders had left, either due to personal matters or ideological disagreements. Despite this, many people were willing to pay for the dream. In its first ICO in July 2014, Ethereum was a resounding success, raising over 30,000 bitcoins in just 42 days. At the time, the market capitalization was approximately $18 million. A total of 72 million ETH were issued, with an average price of $0.3. A year later, on July 30, 2015, with the block height reaching the preset 1,028,201, the Ethereum mainnet went live, marking the beginning of the world's first computer. Despite its ambitious goals, Ethereum was little more than a demonstration platform at the time, with limited applications. Transactions sometimes took an hour to be uploaded to the blockchain, and the programmability and security of contracts were a joke, relying heavily on manual control. Precisely because of this, in 2016, less than a month after the launch of The DAO, considered the largest crowdfunding experiment in human history, a hacker exploited a reentrancy attack vulnerability in The DAO's smart contract and successfully stole 3.6 million ETH, effectively depleting a third of the $150 million raised. This incident once again shook the belief that code is law. The community debated endlessly over whether to roll back the project, and Vitalik ultimately resolved to hard fork, resulting in the creation of Ethereum Classic. 2017 was a year of explosive growth for Ethereum. ICOs saw explosive growth that year, with projects like EOS, Tezos, and Filecoin emerging. The myth that a white paper alone could raise billions of dollars became a reality. In this era of selling dreams, Ethereum also saw a surge in growth. According to data, over 50,000 ERC-20 token contracts were deployed on the Ethereum network that year, raising over $4 billion. Ethereum's price soared from $8 at the beginning of the year to $700 by the end of the year, bolstering its ecosystem of applications and earning it widespread recognition as a key infrastructure asset. However, the chaotic cryptocurrency market quickly attracted regulatory scrutiny. The September 4th ICO crash shattered the ICO dream. By the end of 2018, ETH's price had fallen by over 90% from its peak. Once-praised, it gave way to widespread discontent. Network congestion and high transaction fees became issues that plagued Ethereum. The shattered economic benefits, however, became nourishment for technologists. During the bear market of 2018-2019, developers with dreams began to focus on technological research. The Byzantium fork, Constantinople fork, and Istanbul fork continued to be updated, and Rollup also came onto the scene. These efforts, to a certain extent, resolved Ethereum's bottleneck in data availability and laid the foundation for the subsequent explosion of Ethereum applications.
Climax after Climax: Defi, NFTs, and a New Crisis
With a touch of reluctance, Ethereum finally reached its peak.
In 2020, Compound ignited the Defi summer, and the wave of liquidity mining swept the entire cryptocurrency market. DEXs, lending, synthetic assets, and insurance protocols mushroomed after rain. Ethereum's TVL soared eightfold, from $2 billion at the beginning of the year to $16 billion by the end of the year. It's undeniable that finance, even more than global computing, seemed to offer the market a glimmer of hope. However, this also created problems. Ethereum, facing increasing congestion, couldn't wait for a perfect solution, so Layer 2 became the most viable path. System upgrades also fueled the success of Layer 2. In December 2020, the Beacon Chain officially launched, marking a major turning point for Ethereum and achieving immediate results. Within a month of its launch, 520,000 ETH were successfully staked. This, in turn, laid the groundwork for the subsequent battle for sovereignty.
The following year, 2021 saw another surge in Ethereum applications. NFT fever surged, and small images brought the crypto boom to the world. While many may not yet know what ERC-721 is, and digital art may not yet have a chance to truly reveal itself, the hype was already building. NFT trading platforms like OpenSea, Rarible, and Foundation have emerged, with monthly NFT trading volume peaking at $12.6 billion. Gas fees have once again become a focus. In August 2021, the EIP-1559 upgrade implemented a basic fee burning mechanism. Deflation cheered holders and the price of ETH also soared, soaring to a high of $4,900. 2022 was a dark year for the cryptocurrency world. The collapse of Terra and FTX caught the market off guard. Bitcoin and Ethereum were like riding a roller coaster, and the entire crypto world silently entered a good night. But technology has nothing to do with price, and Ethereum's roadmap remains unaffected by price. On September 15, 2022, Ethereum officially completed the merger of its mainnet and beacon chain, marking the company's true transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Miners retreated en masse, and stakers took over as the center of power. However, from this point on, Layer 2 brought new challenges to Ethereum. Layer 2 relies on Ethereum's security to execute transactions, but it doesn't generate corresponding revenue. It trades off a significant decline in mainchain revenue for value, even negatively impacting the underlying mechanisms. For example, Rollups, the primary technology used in daily transactions, have revived the inflation that ETH had been designed to mitigate. Against this backdrop, the rise of Layer 2 is undoubtedly an encroachment on Ethereum's sovereignty, drawing criticism from many Ethereum supporters. To illustrate this with simple data, the Base chain alone has snatched over $40 billion in market capitalization from Ethereum. Against this backdrop, is trading on Ethereum still necessary? This is a question Ethereum needs to consider in its new phase. Regardless, despite the suspicion of self-sacrifice, this shift in trading mechanisms reflects the shift in Ethereum's values. From a single point to multiple poles, from solitary dominance to harmonious coexistence, Ethereum's technological philosophy continues to evolve. Since 2023, ETH's price performance has declined. It was also from this year that the once-heralded "Ethereum killers" began fleeing Ethereum, seeking differentiated positioning and thereby reshaping the "100-chain war" landscape. Solana, after nearing extinction, rebounded, leveraging "MEME" as its catalyst, returning to the forefront. BNB, backed by the Binance ecosystem, enjoyed a favorable environment, while Aptos and Sui focused on the institutional market. In stark contrast, Ethereum's future was subject to a flurry of debate, with speculation surrounding its midlife crisis rampant. As the market shifted from incremental growth to a steady climb in existing stock, without the shadow of rapid growth, governance, a once insignificant mechanism in the market, finally began to attract public attention. The Ethereum Foundation was the subject of a wave of criticism, reaching its peak in 2024. Perhaps even the Foundation itself could not have anticipated that a simple token sale would trigger such a massive outcry. On August 23, 2024, the Ethereum Foundation transferred 35,000 ETH to Kraken. The market quickly accused the foundation of negative impacts from frequent token sales, and its vague budget further fueled suspicion. The foundation was accused of six offenses, and former Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi was directly accused of being a mere figurehead. At the height of the controversy, she even received death threats. This deeply displeased Vitalik, who not only supported Aya on social media but also posted ridiculously absurd statements, such as "I've considered leaving Ethereum."
Present Tense: Ethereum's Changes and Consistencies
But it was also that year that the institutional narrative took over the technical and application narrative of Ethereum, becoming a new growth engine for ETH. On July 23, 2024, the US SEC approved the Ethereum spot ETF applications from eight issuers, shattering the securities argument. Ethereum's identity was completely clear, and it officially entered the embrace of Wall Street. This has given rise to theories of a shift in ownership, suggesting a shift in ETH from retail investors to institutional investors. According to available data, Ethereum spot ETF issuers hold a net position of over 5.88 million ETH, valued at $22.39 billion and representing approximately 4.87% of Ethereum's market capitalization. BlackRock holds the largest position, holding over 2.46 million ETH, nearly half of the total. In other words, BlackRock investors have become the largest institutional market makers in Ethereum. In 2025, the long-dormant Ethereum was awakened by capital. Looking back from the future to the present, 2025 may be the first year of Ethereum's institutionalization. ETH has officially joined the crypto reserve narrative, with institutions such as SharpLink Gaming, BitMine, Bit Digital, BTCS, and GameSquare all establishing Ethereum vaults. According to data from Strategic ETH Reserve, 66 entities now hold over 100 ETH, collectively holding over 2.47 million ETH, valued at $9.78 billion, equivalent to 43.70% of the ETH ETF's overall size. As time has finally shifted from the past to the present, the evolution of Ethereum is slowly becoming clearer. From a technical perspective, Ethereum's often-criticized TPS has increased from 15/s to 194/s, a more than tenfold increase in efficiency. In terms of price, ETH has soared 7,600-fold, from $0.50 to $3,800. Ethereum's applications are no longer limited to simple voting DMs, but have broadened to encompass a wide range of fields, including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and insurance. With over 1.1 million validators and 3.6 million ETH locked in staking, the total value (TVL) has soared from $520,000 to $81.4 billion, with a market share of 59.9%, making it the undisputed leader in the market. Even the foundation is undergoing significant changes. In March 2025, Aya Miyaguchi became the foundation's chairperson, but she will no longer hold day-to-day management responsibilities. Two core developers, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, have replaced her, marking the beginning of a governance shift. Even amidst change, there are constants. From 17 to 31, Vitalik Buterin remains the soul of Ethereum. Even though sovereignty has been ceded to Wall Street, even though the company faces a constant choice between lofty ideals and the realities of survival, even though it relies on so-called institutional price manipulation for price growth, and even though the best narrative is integrating RWA and PayFi into the traditional financial system, Ethereum has its unchanging core and still represents the most decentralized future. With over 250,000 developers and researchers, Ethereum remains one of the most decentralized blockchain development communities. When people discuss technology and ideals, Ethereum is often mentioned. Many unresolved questions remain. Where is Ethereum governance headed? How will it respond to the impact of Layer 2? What new applications will emerge? Is account abstraction feasible? Will Ethereum become more open or closed? Ethereum is about to enter its next decade, and this dream-making journey is far from over.
Huang Bo
Xu Lin
Beincrypto
dailyhodl
Bitcoinist