Ethereum Celebrates 10 Years of Blockchain Innovation

Ethereum, launched in 2015 as a programmable blockchain platform, revolutionized decentralized applications and smart contracts, enabling sectors like finance and digital art to flourish through decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and DAOs. A major early challenge arose in 2016 when a hack of The DAO led to a $50 million ETH loss, prompting a hard fork that split Ethereum into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC), underscoring the community’s role in governance and security. Ethereum has since experienced significant growth, with recent months showing a 54% price increase, outpacing Bitcoin, driven by enthusiasm around stablecoins, institutional adoption including spot Ethereum ETFs by firms like BlackRock and Fidelity, and growing corporate crypto treasuries. Efforts to simplify Ethereum’s complex technical stack are underway, with proposals like “Lean Ethereum” advocating quantum-secure, simplified architecture improvements such as zero-knowledge virtual machines and the RISC-V framework to boost security and developer accessibility. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Ethereum remains central to the Web3 ecosystem, recognized for its perfect uptime, enhanced security, and institutional embrace, positioning it as foundational infrastructure for the decentralized internet.