Ethereum’s story began in early 2014 as a Swiss-registered project aimed at building a blockchain capable of running on executable smart contracts. The idea was spearheaded by Vitalik Buterin, who envisioned a blockchain capable of surpassing Bitcoin’s limited scripting. That same year, Ethereum raised over $18 million in one of crypto’s first initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Development progressed through a series of testnets, including Olympic, the final pre-launch network, before the mainnet (Frontier) went live on July 30, 2015. The launch marked a new era in crypto, opening the door for the industry to evolve beyond a fringe movement.
Over the past decade, Ethereum has been the driving force behind the evolution of cryptocurrency and blockchain at every level. As a community-led project, it has evolved with each iteration, going from a pioneering smart contract platform into the backbone of decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 innovation. Driven by the Ethereum Foundation, it constantly upgrades its roadmap, incorporating community feedback and implementing key changes to position itself as the foundation of the decentralized internet.
Reflecting on the last 10 years, James Wo, the founder and CEO of DFG, a Web3 VC firm founded in 2015 with a focus on Ethereum-based projects, highlighted its “decade of continuous computing” that “no other large-scale system can claim.”
Wo pointed to major “hard fork upgrades” that reshaped the network, while emphasizing that Ethereum’s “core values of open innovation have stayed intact.”
Moshe Hogeg, founder and senior consultant at TOMI, a Web3 infrastructure project building a decentralized internet, adds: “Ethereum didn’t just introduce smart contracts—it introduced a new mental mode for how we interact with the internet. A decade later, we’re finally seeing apps that bring that vision to everyday users.”
Ethereum’s vision is very much the vision of Web3, both technically and philosophically. Its idea for a smart contract-powered general-purpose blockchain has inspired countless other Layer-1s such as Solana and Polkadot. Within the industry, many speculate that the growing momentum of competing Layer-1s will diminish Ethereum’s dominance within Web3.
Wo responded to this sentiment by saying that “Ethereum still accounts for the highest number of active developers… twice that of Solana,” adding that “EVM remains the most active tech stack overall. Layer-2s only reinforce this dominance as they are home to over $50 billion in TVL.”
Echoing a similar sentiment, Hogeg adds: “Ethereum might not be the only playground anymore, but it remains the anchor of trust. Layer-2s and alternative chains offer scale—Ethereum still offers credibility.”
As crypto continues to mature, enterprise adoption of blockchain has become a major focus, and Ethereum hasn’t taken a backseat in this regard. In 2017, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance was established to empower corporations and institutions to build private blockchain applications using its architecture.
While institutional adoption of Ethereum has been gradual compared to Bitcoin, Q2 of 2025 saw unprecedented institutional uptake through ETFs and corporate treasuries. In July alone, over 1.2 million ETH (over $4 billion) were purchased by corporations, crypto-native firms, and whales, while institutional investors funneled nearly $1 billion into ETH funds in a single week, highlighting an accelerating demand across both channels.
While this has caused Ethereum’s value to skyrocket, it has also sparked a debate over the risk that too much corporate and institutional control over the currency could undermine decentralization, ecosystem balance, and governance.
Wo believes that institutional adoption of Ethereum brings credibility, and “while it may seem like institutional dominance risks centralization, it’s possible accumulated ETH may eventually be staked through diverse node operators, which can actually strengthen network resilience instead.”
With a slightly different take, Hogeg adds: “Institutions validate the asset, but not necessarily the mission. The real test is ensuring Ethereum’s decentralization stays real, not just rhetorical.”
Looking ahead, Ethereum’s future hinges on scaling, modularity, and resilience. An additional danksharding upgrade to ease gas fees and buzz around account abstraction that promises an app-like wallet UX could help future-proof the ecosystem.
Wo, a strong advocate for account abstraction, believes the future is about “abstracting away chain concepts so that users interact with applications, not infrastructure, while Ethereum hums silently in the background.”
As Ethereum pushes toward becoming a truly global settlement layer and decentralized computing platform, it will need to balance scalability, decentralization, and innovation with care. Whether it remains Web3’s anchor over the next 10 years or not, it must continue to focus not only on the tech but also on its values.
Image by RockYourCradle from Pixabay
