Ethereum Ten Years: The Evolution and Dilemmas of the World Computer

In the past century, humanity has redefined the form of computers several times. From the massive computers born for rocket navigation in the mid-20th century, to personal computers entering households, and then to smartphones putting computers in our pockets. Every leap in computing power has reshaped the way people connect with the world.

In 2013, a 19-year-old Vitalik Buterin had an idea while playing a game: if there were a "world computer" that was not owned by any company, not controlled by a single authority, and could be used by anyone, could it become the starting point for the next form of computing?

On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was officially launched in a small office in Berlin. At that moment, the spark of the world computer was ignited.

Starting Point and Spark

Ethereum was the first to embed smart contracts into the blockchain, providing a Turing-complete stage that transforms the blockchain from merely a bookkeeping tool into a world-class public computer capable of running programs.

The newly emerged world computer quickly faced severe tests. In June 2016, the "The DAO" incident led to the theft of a large amount of assets, and the community engaged in intense discussions about whether to "rollback history," ultimately choosing a hard fork. This event brought the governance issue of the world computer to the forefront for the first time.

The ICO boom of 2017-2018 pushed Ethereum to its peak, but the subsequent bubble burst also led it into a trough. Issues of network congestion and high transaction fees became apparent, and for the first time, the World Computer revealed the limitations of insufficient computing power.

To address performance bottlenecks, the Ethereum community has explored various solutions such as on-chain sharding and off-chain scaling. In 2019, Rollup technology emerged, enhancing processing capacity by bundling large volumes of transactions for submission and verification on the main chain. Ethereum has gradually formed an expansion path of "mainnet security, layer two execution," beginning to break down the world computer into a multi-layer collaborative system.

In the following years, DeFi and NFTs exploded on Ethereum. In August 2021, the EIP-1559 upgrade implemented a basic fee burn mechanism, reducing inflation pressure during periods of high demand. On September 15, 2022, "The Merge" was completed, switching the core energy of the world computer from PoW to PoS, reducing energy consumption by 99% and the new issuance rate by 90%.

In March 2024, the "Dencun" upgrade introduced Proto-Danksharding technology, significantly reducing the cost of Rollups submitting data to the mainnet, marking a further step towards the sharding goal of the world computer.

Ten years have passed, and this world computer has transformed from the ideal in the white paper into an irreplaceable infrastructure in reality. However, new challenges have also emerged.

The Fog of Midlife

As we enter 2024-2025, the dilemmas faced by Ethereum are becoming increasingly apparent:

1. The Layer2 diversion effect is significant. A large number of transactions and value remain on the second-layer network, failing to flow back to the mainnet, eroding the value capture ability of the main chain.

2. Competition among external public chains intensifies. High-performance public chains like Solana have attracted a large number of new projects; Tron has surpassed Ethereum in the stablecoin sector; BSC and others have captured part of the GameFi and altcoin trading volume.

3. Governance and security concerns. The issue of staking centralization raises worries about how to promote the diversification of staking participants without compromising network security, which remains an unresolved question.

4. Controversy over the role of the foundation. The community questions the foundation's lack of transparency in ecological funding and financial management, while its "laissez-faire" attitude has led to a continuous accumulation of ecological division and narrative confusion.

5. The application layer is stagnant. Apart from DeFi and NFTs, directions such as social, gaming, identity, and DAO have failed to produce phenomenon-level products that can compete. There is a lack of a spark that can ignite a new wave of large-scale application.

6. Market performance has been poor. The ETH price has not broken through historical highs for a long time, lagging behind other crypto assets like Bitcoin for years. Although institutional allocation has provided some support, there has not been a significant leap in the on-chain ecosystem itself.

Ten years from now, Ethereum still needs to answer: as a world computer, what kind of programs should it run to reignite global imagination.

The Untrodden Path, Direction for the Next Decade

In the face of internal and external challenges during middle age, whether Ethereum can emerge from the trough depends on whether technology and ecology can create new growth opportunities.

On a technical level, the community has outlined an upgrade blueprint for the post-merge era, aiming to increase the overall throughput capacity to 100,000 transactions per second, while ensuring that L2 inherits the core characteristics of Ethereum, making the entire network experience more cohesive.

In terms of governance and economics, the Ethereum Foundation has initiated a new structural reform, attempting to step from behind the scenes to the forefront, becoming the helmsman guiding ecological development. The community is also discussing how to extract profits from the prosperity of Layer 2 and optimize the protocol fee and MEV distribution mechanism.

However, technology and funding are not enough. Every peak of Ethereum in the past has been ignited by new applications and new narratives. Vitalik reminds that Ethereum developers should not just replicate Web2, but should focus on future interaction forms, including wearable devices, AR, brain-computer interfaces, and local AI.

The world's computer, a ten-year itch. It has not stopped operating, it is only searching for a new direction. The next decade belongs to it, and also to everyone who still believes in this dream.

As Vitalik said, "Everyone who speaks in the Ethereum community has the opportunity to participate in the process of building the future together."