Ethereum at 10: The Unstoppable Rise of Crypto’s Game-Changer

From zero to $400 billion—Ethereum didn’t just disrupt finance, it rewrote the rules.

The birth of a rebel

A 19-year-old prodigy drops a whitepaper. Banks scoff. The internet bets big. Who’s laughing now?

Gas wars and growing pains

Congestion. Sky-high fees. The ‘world computer’ nearly choked on its own success—until layer 2s came to the rescue.

The Merge: Betting the house on proof-of-stake

99.95% energy cut overnight. Purists screamed ‘centralization!’ while institutions quietly piled in.

DeFi summer and the yield farming craze

Billions poured into protocols offering Wall Street returns without the suits or SEC subpoenas.

NFT mania breaks the internet

Bored Apes. CryptoPunks. Suddenly everyone understood blockchain—even if they thought JPEGs were an ‘investment.’

Ten years in, Ethereum’s survived hacks, bear markets, and maximalist tantrums. Meanwhile, TradFi still can’t settle in less than three days.

What Was the DAO Hack’s Impact on Ethereum?

In 2016, ethereum faced its first major crisis with the DAO hack, and it was able to test the strength of the network. A decentralized venture fund called the DAO raised 12.7 million ETH, but was hacked in June, and hackers wiped 3.6 million ETH because of a smart contract vulnerability. The community, divided on whether to preserve blockchain immutability or recover the funds, voted for a hard fork to reverse the theft.

This move gave birth to Ethereum Classic, a chain of people who valued immutability. The DAO hack both highlighted the potential of ETH and led to discussions regarding governance of blockchain, which has been a factor in the philosophical and technical development of the ecosystem.

Why Was the 2022 Merge a Game-Changer for Ethereum?

The Merge, completed on September 15, 2022, was the most ambitious upgrade of Ethereum, transitioning from energy-intensive proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. This transition decreased the energy consumption by 99%, mitigating the impact on the environment and increasing the sustainability level, as a 2022 Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute report stated. 

It was the Merge that proved the technical reliability of the digital asset. Despite competition from chains like Solana, this upgrade positioned ETH as a leader in eco-friendly blockchain technology, paving the way for future scalability improvements.

In what marked the greatest institutional adoption to date, on March 20, 2024, BlackRock launched its genesis tokenized USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) on Ethereum. BUIDL, with a $517 million market cap, underscored ETH’s reliability as a blockchain for traditional finance. The infrastructure of Ethereum was further supported by the fact that the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, had recommended the asset class as a young asset.

This development emphasized the increased usage of this digital asset, which filled the gap between traditional and decentralized finance in the long run, as it attracted the attention of institutional investors and made the platform even more trusted.

In July of 2024, the SEC approved nine spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for the first time in history. Announced on July 23, these ETFs, which also included ETHA from BlackRock, have established ETH as an institutional-grade asset, though initial net outflows of $390 million reflected high-fee adjustments from Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust.

The ETF approval signaled ETH’s integration into traditional financial markets, broadening its investor base and reinforcing its legitimacy as a mainstream asset class, with potential for sustained inflows as the market matures.

Activated on May 7, 2025, the Pectra Upgrade merged the Prague and Electra upgrades to optimize both the execution and consensus layers of Ethereum. Phase 1 increased the capacity of layer-2 blobs by 2 times and lowered transaction fees, providing account abstraction to use stablecoins to pay gas fees. It has also increased the limit of validators staking to 2,048 ETH as opposed to 32 ETH, making it more accessible. 

The second phase, targeted for late 2025, will see the introduction of Verkle Trees and PeerDAS as they aim at achieving greater scalability and optimizing efficiency. The Pectra Upgrade makes Ethereum competitive, scalable, and developer-friendly. 

Ethereum’s first decade has been a remarkable journey of innovation, resilience, and adaptation. It created a new era of blockchain potential by innovating the industry with smart contracts, DeFi, and NFTs. The next decade has a massive potential for ETH to make history in establishing the future of the crypto industry with a vibrant ecosystem and escalating real-world use.

Disclaimer: Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions. 

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