Today Ethereum is 10 years old. Wow! As headlines mark the anniversary with greatest‑hits reels of booms and busts, the network’s arc looks less like a hype cycle and more like an infrastructure build‑out: shipping core protocol overhauls, surviving governance shocks, bootstrapping whole industries (DeFi, NFTs), and—over the last year—crossing into traditional finance via U.S. spot ETFs. Cointelegraph’s retrospective set the tone; here’s a sourced rundown of the decade’s turning points and why they matter now.
2013–2015: From white paper to genesis
Vitalik Buterin circulated the Ethereum white paper in late 2013; a year later, a public sale raised about $18.3 million to fund development. The network’s Frontier release went live on July 30, 2015, establishing Ethereum as a programmable base layer for smart contracts—an architecture that would soon power ERC‑20 tokens, DeFi protocols, and NFTs.
2016: The DAO hack and an early governance stress test
In mid‑2016, a vulnerability in “The DAO” led to the siphoning of roughly $50 million in ETH at then‑prevailing prices. The community’s response—coordinating a hard fork to restore funds—resolved the immediate crisis but splintered the chain into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC), establishing a template for how values and pragmatism collide in decentralized governance.
2017–2019: ICO summer, then the cool‑down
Ethereum’s token standard (ERC‑20) catalyzed the ICO boom of 2017, elevating ETH to crypto’s No. 2 market cap and drawing in builders and regulators alike. The subsequent bust exposed weak disclosures and unsustainable funding models—yet left behind core primitives: token issuance, decentralized exchanges, and an emerging developer stack. (Context via Cointelegraph’s 10‑year lookback.)
2020–2021: DeFi summer, NFT breakout, and EIP‑1559
Lockdowns and yield experiments propelled DeFi through 2020, while NFTs carried Ethereum to mainstream culture in 2021. Under the hood, the London hard fork activated EIP‑1559 in August 2021, introducing a base‑fee burn that changed ETH’s fee mechanics and supply dynamics—a step toward a leaner, more predictable monetary policy.
2022: The Merge — energy use down ~99.95%
On September 15, 2022, Ethereum executed the Merge, swapping proof‑of‑work for proof‑of‑stake and cutting estimated energy consumption by around 99.95%. It also laid the foundation for future scaling via rollups and proposer‑builder separation. The Merge remains the largest live‑system consensus transition in crypto history.
2023: Shapella unlocks withdrawals—and confidence
The Shanghai/Capella (Shapella) upgrade in April 2023 enabled partial and full withdrawals for stakers, resolving a multi‑year risk over exit liquidity and validator churn. Post‑fork analyses from institutional researchers found withdrawals processed smoothly and validator performance recovering quickly, cementing confidence in PoS operations.
2024: Dencun and the blob era slash L2 costs
On March 13, 2024, the Dencun upgrade shipped EIP‑4844 (“proto‑danksharding”), adding a low‑cost “blob” lane for rollups to post data. Because blobs are pruned and cheaper than calldata, rollup fees dropped materially, accelerating L2 adoption and pushing more activity off the congested L1. Think of Dencun as an efficiency unlock on the road to full danksharding.
2024–2025: Spot ETH ETFs bring Wall Street money
The U.S. SEC approved spot ether ETFs in May–July 2024, and funds began trading in late July, providing regulated exposure routes for RIA platforms, pensions, and corporate treasuries. One year on, the products have become part of the ETH narrative, much as spot bitcoin funds did for BTC—linking crypto cycles to the flows and seasonality of traditional markets.
2025: Ten years in, what does the data say?
Market coverage this summer notes ETH’s strong 90‑day bounce into the anniversary window, while also observing that prices remain below prior all‑time highs—an echo of past cycles where infrastructure gains preceded new demand peaks. Price pages and market briefings show ETH’s volatility is still very much alive, with options positioning and ETF flows now part of the daily tape.
Why these milestones mattered (and what they unlocked)
- Programmability (2015): Ethereum made “money‑with‑rules” programmable at scale—tokens, on‑chain treasuries, automated market makers—setting the stage for entire sectors.
- Governance reality (2016): The DAO fork showed that code and community norms co‑determine outcomes; that lesson continues to inform upgrade and security debates.
- Fee economics (2021): EIP‑1559’s burn and base‑fee model improved UX and changed supply dynamics, informing “ultrasound money” memes and research.
- Sustainability & security (2022–2023): The Merge and Shapella aligned Ethereum with contemporary energy expectations and operationalized staking as a long‑term security budget.
- Scalability path (2024): Dencun’s blob lane made L2s cheap enough to broaden mainstream use cases (payments, gaming, social).
- Institutional bridge (2024–2025): Spot ETFs lowered the compliance barrier for large pools of capital to hold or benchmark ETH, potentially smoothing—but also financializing—future cycles.
The open questions for Ethereum’s second decade
1) Next upgrades and UX: Research and client teams are iterating on proposals under the “Pectra” umbrella (e.g., EIP‑7702 for account abstraction‑style UX, EIP‑7251 to raise validator stake caps). Timelines are fluid; the direction is clear: safer wallets, simpler signatures, and better validator economics.
2) L2 consolidation vs. diversity: Dencun favored rollups; now the question is whether liquidity and developer mindshare concentrate on a handful of L2s or remain fragmented across many ecosystems—each with different sequencer trust assumptions.
3) MEV and fairness: As block building and order flow professionalize, Ethereum must curb harmful MEV while preserving credible neutrality—an area of active research linked to proposer‑builder separation and encrypted mempools. (Context from Ethereum’s roadmap discourse.)
4) Regulation and market structure: ETF inflows, exchange oversight, and disclosures will increasingly shape ETH’s liquidity conditions. Macro sensitivity (rates, risk appetite) now matters as much as crypto‑native catalysts.
Takeaway
The simplest way to read Ethereum’s first ten years is as a sequence of risk retirements. Launch risk (2015). Social‑layer risk (2016). Fee‑market and supply mechanics (2021). Consensus shift and withdrawals (2022–2023). Throughput economics (2024). And, finally, the trad‑fi interface (2024–2025). Each milestone made the network a little more boring in the good sense—predictable, investable, and usable—even as innovation sprinted ahead on L2s and in applications.
If history rhymes, the second decade will be decided less by any single “flippening” headline and more by steady plumbing improvements—wallet UX, privacy‑preserving payments, safer execution markets—and by how well Ethereum adapts to the ETF era without losing its open‑source soul. For now, the chain that launched on July 30, 2015 has matured into the programmable base layer its founders imagined, with a roadmap still long and a community still arguing in public—exactly as designed.