Ethereum's Tenth Anniversary: The Midlife Crisis of the World Computer

In the past decade, Ethereum has transformed from an ideal into an irreplaceable infrastructure in reality. However, over time, this "world computer" has also faced new challenges.

Starting and Growing

In July 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was launched, pioneering the integration of smart contracts into the blockchain. In the following years, Ethereum went through significant phases such as the DAO incident, the ICO boom, the DeFi explosion, and the NFT craze, continuously improving itself.

In September 2022, Ethereum completed its transition to PoS, significantly reducing energy consumption and changing its economic model. The Dencun upgrade in March 2024 introduced Proto-Danksharding technology, further lowering the costs of layer two networks.

The Dilemma of Middle Age

However, entering 2024-2025, the challenges faced by Ethereum are becoming apparent:

1. The layer two network has a significant diversion effect, and the value capture of the mainnet is eroded.
2. The competition among other public chains is becoming increasingly fierce, especially in key areas such as stablecoins.
3. Staking centralization raises governance and security concerns.
4. The role of the foundation is highly controversial, and the community lacks consensus.
5. Insufficient innovation at the application layer, lacking new killer applications.
6. The market performance is unsatisfactory, and the ETH price has not been able to break through its historical high for a long time.

Future Directions

In the face of these challenges, Ethereum is exploring new development pathways:

1. Technical Upgrade: Improve overall throughput and optimize the collaboration between L1 and L2.
2. Governance reform: Foundation restructuring, strengthening ecological guidance and support.
3. Economic model optimization: Explore ways to benefit from the prosperity of L2.
4. Explore new areas: Focus on emerging directions such as social, identity, AI, etc.
5. Embrace new technologies: Incorporate wearable devices, AR, brain-computer interfaces, etc. into the design vision.

Ten years later, the world's computers are still searching for new breakthroughs. Whether the future can reignite global imagination depends on whether Ethereum can find a new balance in technological innovation and application development.