Ethereum ten years A journey of dream-making

From the launch of the Mainnet on July 30, 2015, to July 30, 2025, Ethereum will have completed 10 years.

Compared to the ten years of Bitcoin, the ten years of Ethereum may evoke more mixed feelings for those in the crypto industry. If Bitcoin is the stabilizing anchor of cryptocurrency, then Ethereum must be the barometer of the industry. Thus, as the main platform for crypto applications, the changes in Ethereum have impacts that go far beyond the fluctuations in paper prices; they reflect the rise and fall of industry development behind the scenes. In other words, compared to Bitcoin’s “HOLD”, in Ethereum, “BUILD” is the core.

The dream ship of the world computer has set sail, and has now developed into a huge behemoth that is difficult to steer. Looking back over the past decade, it may not only be Ethereum that has grown, but also all the people in the cryptocurrency space who have experienced ups and downs.

The Journey Begins: Genesis, Hard Forks, and ICOs

Set the pointer to the year 2011. At that time, Vitalik Buterin was just an ordinary and unremarkable 17-year-old Russian-Canadian boy. Like many ordinary teenagers, he was excited to find a job writing articles for a website called “Bitcoin Weekly,” with a payment of 5 Bitcoins for each article.

From being a contributor to founding Bitcoin Magazine, Vitalik seems to have started missing his identity as a developer. Two years later, just as the market was immersed in the frenzy of Bitcoin, this young man had a sudden inspiration during a trip to San Francisco: what if he developed a programmable blockchain network? In fact, initially, Vitalik did not plan to develop a new platform, but he wrote multiple letters advocating to Bitcoin core developers. However, after his emails fell on deaf ears, this idea, which seemed quite crazy at the time, quickly took over his mind.

Execution is the ladder that promotes human progress. Although it was just a golden idea, Vitalik quickly completed the first draft of the Ethereum white paper and shared this concept with friends via email. What was expected to be a plan scorned by Bitcoin enthusiasts unexpectedly gained recognition from peers, and soon like-minded individuals began to gather.

Vitalik initially chose five co-founders, including himself, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, and Amir Chetrit. In early 2014, three developers, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke, joined, and thus the founding team, humorously referred to by the market as the “Eight Kings,” was officially established.

The spark of technology begins to ignite from this moment.

In 2014, it was a year of significant collapse for the cryptocurrency world. The Mentougou incident caused a temporary collapse of Bitcoin faith, and the value of cryptocurrencies faced severe scrutiny. It was also in this year that the idealist Vitalik encountered his first existential crisis.

The 8 co-founders have been debating endlessly about the future of Ethereum. One faction believes that it should take the Silicon Valley route, embracing venture capital and transitioning to a business model, while the other faction firmly upholds the ideals of decentralization, arguing that only non-profit avenues can realize true faith. The final outcome is well-known: Vitalik chose the non-profit route, which led to the fragmentation of the co-founders. By the end of the year, only four members remained: Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Mihai Alisie, and Jeffrey Wilcke. Sixteen years later, for personal reasons or due to ideological differences, all co-founders eventually parted ways.

However, many people are still willing to pay for their dreams. In the first ICO in July 2014, Ethereum achieved great success, raising more than 30,000 Bitcoins in just 42 days, equivalent to about 18 million dollars at that time. A total of 72 million ETH were issued at an average price of 0.3 dollars.

A year later, on July 30, 2015, with the block height reaching the preset 1028201, the Ethereum mainnet went live, marking the beginning of the world computer. Although the goal was ambitious, at that time, Ethereum was merely a showcase platform with extremely limited applications that could run. Sometimes, transactions were difficult to get on-chain even after an hour, and the programmability and security of contracts seemed more like a joke, highly relying on manual control.

Because of this, in 2016, less than a month after the launch of the largest crowdfunding experiment in human history, “The DAO,” a hacker successfully exploited a reentrancy attack vulnerability in The DAO’s smart contract, stealing 3.6 million ETH and removing one-third of the $150 million raised. This incident once again shook the belief that code is law, and the community engaged in endless debates over whether to roll back or not, leading Vitalik to ultimately decide on a hard fork, resulting in the creation of Ethereum Classic.

2017 was a breakout year for Ethereum. ICOs experienced explosive growth this year, with projects like EOS, Tezos, and Filecoin emerging, where a single white paper could raise billions in a magical narrative coming to life. In an era of selling dreams, Ethereum also saw correlated growth. From the data, that year, over 50,000 ERC-20 token contracts were deployed on the Ethereum network, raising over $4 billion. In terms of price, Ethereum rose from $8 at the beginning of the year to $700 by the end of the year, and the Ethereum application ecosystem grew significantly, with the title of infrastructure deeply ingrained in people’s minds. However, nothing lasts forever; the chaotic cryptocurrency market quickly attracted regulatory scrutiny, and the abrupt event of September 4 shattered the ICO dream. By the end of 2018, the price of ETH had dropped by over 90% from its peak, and the once-praised sentiment turned into internal dissatisfaction, as network congestion and high fees became issues that Ethereum faced.

The fragmented economic benefits have instead become the nourishment for technocrats. Developers with dreams began to focus on research and technology during the bear market of 2018-2019, with the Byzantium fork, Constantinople fork, and Istanbul fork continuously updating. Rollup also took the historical stage, addressing Ethereum’s bottleneck in data availability to some extent, laying the foundation for the subsequent explosion of Ethereum applications.

Climaxes: Defi, NFT, and New Crisis

With a hint of unyielding ambition, Ethereum has finally迎来了its moment of glory.

In 2020, the summer of DeFi was ignited by Compound, and the wind of liquidity mining swept through the entire cryptocurrency circle. DEXs, lending, synthetic assets, and insurance protocols emerged like mushrooms after rain. Ethereum’s TVL skyrocketed from $2 billion at the beginning of the year to $16 billion by the end of the year, an increase of 8 times. It must be acknowledged that doing finance seemed to provide more hope to the market than a world computer. However, problems also arose; the increasingly congested Ethereum could not wait for a perfect solution, and Layer 2 became the most feasible route at that time. The system upgrade also boosted the success of Layer 2. In December 2020, the Beacon Chain ( officially went live, marking one of the important turning points for Ethereum. The effects were immediate, as within a month of its launch, 520,000 ETH were successfully staked. This also laid hidden dangers for the subsequent battle for sovereignty.

In 2021, Ethereum saw another wave of large-scale applications. The NFT craze emerged, with small images bringing the crypto wind to various parts of the world. Perhaps many still did not know what ERC-721 was, and digital art had yet to unveil its true form, but the clamor of speculation had already arrived. NFT trading platforms like OpenSea, Rarible, and Foundation rose to prominence, with monthly trading volumes for NFTs reaching a peak of 12.6 billion USD. Gas fees became a focal point again; in August 2021, the EIP-1559 upgrade implemented a base fee burning mechanism, and the deflationary nature had holders cheering. The price of ETH also soared, reaching a high of 4,900 USD.

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2022 was a year shrouded in darkness for the crypto world, with the collapses of Terra and FTX catching the market off guard. Bitcoin and Ethereum rode a rollercoaster, and the entire crypto world silently entered into a long night. But technology is unrelated to price; Ethereum’s roadmap will not be shaken by price fluctuations. On September 15, 2022, Ethereum officially completed the merger of the Mainnet and the Beacon Chain (The Merge), marking the true switch from POW to POS, with miners retreating and stakers becoming the center of discourse.

But from this moment on, Layer2 has brought new troubles to Ethereum. Layer2 executes transactions relying on Ethereum’s security, but it has not brought corresponding revenue to Ethereum, choosing to obtain value at the cost of a significant decrease in main chain revenue, which even has a negative impact on the mechanism. For example, the main technical path used in daily transactions, Rollup, has allowed ETH to evade inflation through mechanisms once again. Against this backdrop, the rise of Layer2 is undoubtedly an encroachment on Ethereum’s sovereignty, which has led to criticism from many Ethereum supporters. To illustrate with a simple piece of data, just Base alone has taken over 40 billion USD in market value from Ethereum.

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In this context, does the necessity of trading on Ethereum still exist? This is a question that the new phase of Ethereum needs to consider. However, regardless of the suspicion of self-sacrifice, the shift in this trading mechanism actually reflects the migration of Ethereum’s values, from a single point to a multipolar world, from fighting alone to harmonious coexistence. The technical philosophy of Ethereum continues to evolve.

Starting from 2023, the price performance of ETH has turned sluggish. It is precisely from this year that the once-promoted “Ethereum killers” began to flee from Ethereum, seeking differentiated positioning, and thus reconstructing the pattern of the “hundred chains battle.” Solana, after being on the brink of extinction, made a comeback by leveraging “MEME” to return to the forefront, BNB enjoys the benefits of the Binance ecosystem, while Aptos and Sui target the institutional-level market. In stark contrast, Ethereum’s future has become a topic of heated debate, with discussions around its mid-life crisis becoming rampant. Transitioning from an incremental market to a mature market, the rapid growth that once cast a large shadow has disappeared, and the governance mechanism that was once insignificant to the market has finally begun to attract public attention. The criticisms surrounding the Ethereum Foundation have followed one after another, reaching a peak in development in 2024.

Perhaps even the foundation itself did not anticipate that a routine sale of coins would trigger such a massive tsunami of public opinion. On August 23, 2024, the Ethereum Foundation address transferred 35,000 ETH to Kraken. The market quickly accused the foundation of the negative impact caused by frequent coin sales, and the vague budget further fueled people’s suspicions. The foundation was enumerated with six sins, and the former executive director, Aya Miyaguchi, was directly accused of occupying a position without contributing. During the peak of public outrage, this lady even received death threats. This left Vitalik quite dissatisfied; not only did he publicly support Aya on social media, but he also made “crazy remarks” such as “thinking about leaving Ethereum” that were ridiculed by the masses.

Present Continuous: The Changes and Constants of Ethereum

However, it was also in this year that institutional narratives took over the technical and application narratives of Ethereum, becoming the new growth pole for ETH. On July 23, 2024, the US SEC approved the Ethereum spot ETF applications from eight issuers, and the securities argument fell apart, making Ethereum’s position clear, officially arriving in the embrace of Wall Street. This gave rise to the theory of changing holders, as ETH is shifting from retail holders to institutional holders. According to existing data, the net holdings of Ethereum spot ETF issuers exceed 5.88 million ETH, valued at $22.39 billion, accounting for approximately 4.87% of Ethereum’s market value. Among them, BlackRock has the largest holdings, with over 2.46 million ETH, accounting for nearly half of the total. In other words, BlackRock’s investors have already become the largest institutional holders of Ethereum.

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In 2025, the long-silent Ethereum was awakened by capital-driven forces. Looking back from the future to the present, 2025 might be considered the institutional year of Ethereum. ETH officially joined the narrative of crypto reserves, with institutions like SharpLink Gaming, BitMine, Bit Digital, BTCS, and GameSquare all laying out their Ethereum treasury strategies. According to Strategic ETH Reserve data, there are already 66 entities holding more than 100 ETH, collectively owning over 2.47 million ETH, valued at $9.78 billion, which is equivalent to 43.70% of the overall scale of ETH ETFs.

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The timeline has finally transitioned from the past to the present, and the changes in Ethereum are becoming clearer. From a technical perspective, Ethereum’s criticized TPS has increased from 15/s to 194/s, improving efficiency by more than 10 times; from a price standpoint, ETH has skyrocketed from $0.5 to $3800, a staggering 7600 times increase; the applications of Ethereum are no longer limited to rudimentary voting DApps, but now widely cover various fields including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, insurance, and more, with over 1.1 million validators and 3.6 million ETH locked for staking. The total TVL has surged from $520,000 to $81.4 billion, with a significant increase in magnitude, and a market share reaching 59.9%, making it the undisputed leading public chain in the market. Even the foundation is undergoing significant changes; in March 2025, Aya Miyaguchi became the chairperson of the foundation but no longer holds a daily management position. Two core developers, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, have taken her place, marking the beginning of governance change.

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There are unchanging aspects within change. From 17 to 31, Vitalik Buterin remains the soul of Ethereum. Even though sovereignty has been ceded to Wall Street, even though choices must be made between lofty ideals and the harsh realities of survival, even though it relies on so-called institutions to drive up coin prices, even though the best narrative has already become the integration of traditional financial systems through RWA and Payfi, Ethereum still has its unchanging core, representing the most decentralized future. With over 250,000 developers and researchers, Ethereum remains one of the most decentralized blockchain development communities, and when people mention technology and ideals, it is still Ethereum that is most frequently referenced.

There are many unresolved issues. Where is Ethereum’s governance headed? How to respond to the impact of Layer2? What are the new application directions? Can account abstraction be realized? Will Ethereum be more open or more closed?

Ethereum is about to embark on the next decade, and this journey of dream-making is far from over.