[//]:content-type-MARKDOWN-DONOT-DELETE ![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/17229298751692587449analysis.jpeg) ## [TL；DR]: Since its first launch in 2015, the Ethereum blockchain network has undergone multiple major upgrades, significantly enhancing its functionality, scalability, and security, gradually establishing its leading position in the blockchain field. Vitalik Buterin recently delivered a keynote speech titled "The Next 10 Years of Ethereum" at the Ethereum Developer Community Conference EDCON 2024, pointing out that although Ethereum has made significant progress in fees, transaction speed, and wallet security in the past few years, the challenges and opportunities ahead are equally enormous. With the official launch of the Ethereum spot ETF this year and numerous upgrades and optimizations aimed at improving the efficiency, scalability, and security of blockchain, it will create more possibilities for investors and developers to develop towards a more democratic, secure, and efficient direction. ## Introduction Ethereum has been officially running for 9 years. From the concept of smart contracts to the prosperity of the current crypto market, the theoretical exploration and technological innovation of Ethereum have undoubtedly played an important role. In this article, we will analyze Vitalik Buterin's latest speech to explore the past and future of Ethereum. ## A Brief History of Ethereum Development Ethereum’s development began in 2013, when it was proposed by Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year-old Russian Canadian engineer. Inspired by Bitcoin and with a profound understanding of the limitations of centralized systems (especially from the experience of World of Warcraft), Vitalik released an Ethereum white paper, envisioning a new paradigm that goes beyond Bitcoin's trading capabilities - a new platform that can not only conduct crypto transactions, but also run smart contracts and decentralized applications. Subsequently, he joined forces with members including Gavin Wood (creator of Solidity), Charles Hoskinson (later founding Cardano), Joseph Lubin (later founding ConsenSys), and Anthony Di Iorio to form the core team at the time, clarifying the technical specifications for its core - the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). ![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/17229299371.jpg) Source: @VitalikButerin In 2014, the Ethereum team successfully raised $18.4 million worth of Bitcoin through an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) pre-sale of Ethereum ETH. After a year of intensive development, the Ethereum mainnet was officially launched on July 30, 2015, becoming the first blockchain platform to support smart contracts and fundamentally changing the crypto ecosystem. Since its first launch in 2015, the Ethereum network has undergone multiple major upgrades, significantly enhancing its functionality, scalability, and security, gradually establishing its leading position in the blockchain field. These upgrades include the initial version of Frontier, enhanced security for Homestead, DAO fork event handling, phased Byzantine and Constantinople upgrades for Metropolis, functional enhancements for Istanbul, activation of beacon chain staking, protocol optimization for Berlin and London, and a landmark merger upgrade to transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). The most important upgrades in the past two years include the Shanghai upgrade, which allows validators to withdraw staked ETH; the Cancun upgrade, which reduces fees and increases storage for L2; and the expected Prague upgrade at the end of this year, which will focus on deploying account abstraction to make the user experience smoother and more convenient. In short, the launch of Ethereum has attracted a large number of developers and innovative projects, and has developed into a blockchain platform second only to Bitcoin, supporting a huge developer community and countless innovative applications, leading the development direction of blockchain technology. ## What Valuable Insights did Vitalik Review? Vitalik Buterin recently delivered a keynote speech titled "The Next 10 Years of Ethereum" at the Ethereum Developer Community Conference EDCON 2024, reviewing the development history of Ethereum since 2015 and looking forward to future trends. He talked about the development process of Ethereum over the past nine years, pointing out that although Ethereum has made significant progress in fees, transaction speed, and wallet security in the past few years, the challenges and opportunities for the future are equally enormous. He predicts that by 2034, Ethereum's scalability will be significantly improved, transaction fees will be further reduced, and the combination of Web2 and Web3 will create a more secure, smooth, economical, and sovereign user experience than traditional Web2 services. ![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/17229304822.jpg) Source: ChainCacther Vitalik Buterin emphasizes that developers should not be limited to simply copying the functionality of Web2, but should actively explore new areas beyond Web2. For example, developers can integrate Community Notes, predictive markets, and similar technologies directly into wallets or browsers to create richer and more diverse application scenarios. In addition, Vitalik Buterin mentioned the use cases of future wallets, such as the transparency of voting systems and the integration of finance and voting. These innovative applications will further expand Ethereum's ecosystem and promote its development towards a more democratic, secure, and efficient direction. It is worth mentioning Vitalik reiterated his hope that the application scenarios of blockchain technology can transcend finance. In fact, the related use cases of blockchain have not changed much in the past 10 years, mainly focusing on stablecoins, financial derivatives, decentralized exchanges, and predictive markets. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss future use cases, which may also be one of the reasons why he has a favorable impression of non-financial projects such as the domain name service provider ENS (Ethereum Name Service). ## Where is the Next Glorious Intersection? Through the past nine years, Ethereum has grown from a project concept to the cornerstone of the crypto ecosystem, gaining a huge user base, number of verification nodes, and market value. It has not only driven the development of DApps, DeFi, NFT markets, and DAOs, but also demonstrated its leadership position in the blockchain field. It not only nurtured numerous milestone decentralized applications (DApps) but also served as the cradle of decentralized finance (DeFi), driving the NFT market boom and laying a solid foundation for the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Facing the future, Ethereum doesn’t stop at the status quo, but continues to steadily move forward according to the established roadmap. As Vitalik has stated, Ethereum's scalability will be significantly improved in the future (expected to increase processing power through technology upgrades and Layer 2 by 2034), with a focus on significantly reducing transaction costs, bringing the Layer 2 network experience closer to the mainnet, actively exploring the application of emerging technologies such as wearable devices, AI, AR, and leveraging the core role of the community in enhancing security defense capabilities and service convenience. However, Ethereum still faces many challenges. The current scalability bottleneck, real-world asset tokenization challenges, stablecoin regulation and other difficulties still need to be further resolved, and the volatile trading market will also disturb the confidence of participants. recent severe selling pressure in the crypto market has led to continuous price drops, with Ethereum plummeting by nearly 20% within an hour on the morning of August 5, causing significant market panic. ![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/17229305323.jpg) Source: Gate.io In addition, fierce competition from other Layer1 platforms such as Solana also requires Ethereum to constantly innovate and consolidate its leading position in the crypto ecosystem. Of course, with the official launch of the Ethereum spot ETF this year and numerous upgrades and optimizations aimed at improving the efficiency, scalability, and security of blockchain, it will create more possibilities for investors and developers to develop towards a more democratic, secure, and efficient direction. We also have positive expectations for the next decade of Ethereum and the crypto market.

Author:**Carl Y.**, Gate.io Researcher

Translator:Joy Z.

\*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.

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Ethereum Celebrates its 9th Anniversary, Where Lays its Future Path?