On July 30, 2025, Ethereum quietly marked its 10th anniversary — a decade since it mined its genesis block and launched what would become the most programmable and versatile blockchain in the world. From powering ICO booms to launching the NFT craze, from DeFi’s explosion to its recent shift to Proof-of-Stake, Ethereum has gone from a whitepaper idea to a global computational layer for decentralized innovation.
But how did it all begin? What have we witnessed over the last decade? And what’s next for Ethereum?
Let’s explore:
🔹 Genesis: The Birth of an Idea
Ethereum began in late 2013, when a 19-year-old Russian-Canadian programmer, Vitalik Buterin, envisioned a blockchain that went beyond just digital currency. Bitcoin had shown the world what decentralized value could look like, but Vitalik saw more. He saw a world where smart contracts could allow people to build decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain.
In this vein, he released the Ethereum whitepaper in 2013, proposing a general-purpose blockchain platform. By 2014, Ethereum had gathered a team of co-founders, including Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio. That same year, Ethereum conducted a crowdfunding campaign, raising over $18 million in Bitcoin — one of the first major crypto token sales.
2015: Launch of Ethereum and Smart Contracts
On the 30th of July 2015, Ethereum officially launched with the "Frontier" release. This marked the beginning of a fully programmable blockchain, where developers could build and deploy smart contracts using Solidity, Ethereum’s programming language.
It didn’t take long for the potential to show. Developers built everything from games to wallets, and Ethereum quickly became the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, next to Bitcoin.
2016: The DAO and Ethereum’s First Crisis
Ethereum’s first major stress test came in 2016 with the launch of The DAO — a decentralized autonomous organization that raised $150 million in Ether to fund blockchain projects.
But in June 2016, a hacker exploited a vulnerability in The DAO’s smart contract, siphoning away over $50 million worth of ETH. The Ethereum community was divided: Should they reverse the hack?
Eventually, the network decided to hard fork, returning the stolen funds. This decision created a philosophical rift and resulted in the birth of Ethereum Classic — a separate chain that continued with the original, unaltered transaction history.
2017–2018: The ICO Boom and Scalability Woes
Ethereum hit mainstream headlines during the 2017 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) craze, as startups used smart contracts to raise billions in crypto funding.
At its peak, Ethereum processed over 1.3 million transactions a day, and its native currency, Ether (ETH), soared to an all-time high of over $1,400 in early 2018. But the boom brought problems: network congestion, high gas fees, and scalability bottlenecks.
The infamous CryptoKitties game alone clogged the network in late 2017, showing how easily Ethereum could be overwhelmed.
2019–2021: DeFi, NFTs, and the Road to Ethereum 2.0
These years saw Ethereum mature. The emergence of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) — lending, trading, and earning interest without banks — became the next big thing. Protocols like Uniswap, Compound, and Aave attracted billions in Total Value Locked (TVL), establishing Ethereum as the heart of the DeFi revolution.
At the same time, NFTs exploded in popularity. Digital artists sold JPEGs for millions on platforms like OpenSea and Foundation, powered by Ethereum’s ERC-721 token standard.
However, these innovations strained the network even more. Gas fees skyrocketed, and users clamored for Ethereum’s long-promised scalability solution: the transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
2022: The Merge — Ethereum’s Most Historic Upgrade
After years of anticipation, The Merge happened on September 15, 2022, successfully transitioning Ethereum from energy-intensive PoW to eco-friendly PoS. This reduced Ethereum’s energy consumption by over 99.9% — a major win for environmental sustainability and long-term scalability.
The Merge was followed by the "Shanghai Upgrade (2023)", which enabled staking withdrawals, and set the stage for further network improvements.
2023–2025: Scaling with Rollups and Proto-Danksharding
To handle more users and lower gas fees, Ethereum embraced Layer 2 rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync. These solutions execute transactions off-chain and post data on Ethereum, greatly improving speed and cost-efficiency.
In 2024, Ethereum implemented EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), a key milestone on the path to full data sharding, which promises to drastically increase the network’s throughput.
2025: Ethereum Turns 10 — A New Decade Begins
As Ethereum marked its "10th anniversary" in July 2025, the ecosystem is stronger than ever:
* Over \$400 billion in DeFi assets have passed through Ethereum.
* More than 3,000 dApps are active, ranging from finance to gaming.
* Ethereum now supports account abstraction, making wallet experiences smoother for mainstream users.
* Its Layer 2 ecosystem is thriving, onboarding millions of users globally.
To celebrate the milestone, Ethereum core developers released a retrospective blog post and highlighted the community’s journey from “an experiment to infrastructure.”
Looking forward, Ethereum’s roadmap is focused on:
* Full Danksharding: Expected in late 2025 or early 2026, this will break the network into shards, significantly increasing capacity.
* Verkle Trees: An upgrade that will reduce storage requirements for nodes, enhancing decentralization.
* Stateless Clients: Making it easier for users to run Ethereum nodes with minimal hardware.
* AI & Real-World Integration: Projects are exploring how Ethereum smart contracts can interact with AI agents, IoT, and real-world assets (RWA) like property titles and bonds.
There’s also growing interest in Ethereum Social Layers — integrating identity, reputation, and privacy-preserving tools for Web3 communities.
Ethereum’s journey from a whitepaper to the backbone of decentralized applications has been nothing short of revolutionary. Through forks, hacks, upgrades, and paradigm shifts, it has remained a resilient, community-driven protocol.
Ten years in, Ethereum is not just a blockchain — it’s a global experiment in trustless coordination, programmable value, and decentralized governance.
And the next chapter? It’s still being written — block by block.
By Daniel Ayotunde OMONITAN
Photo credit: Unsplash