Ethereum celebrates its 10th anniversary: What changes will happen in the next decade?

Ethereum celebrates its 10th anniversary: What changes will happen in the next decade?
Ethereum celebrated its tenth anniversary on Wednesday, marking the decade since the birth of its first block. So, what will happen in the next decade?

In its first decade, Ethereum has become the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, successfully addressing survival threats and evolving in multiple ways.

What can we expect from Ethereum in the next decade? Decrypt interviewed some top Ethereum experts to understand their predictions.
In the next five years
Myriad Markets’ forecasters believe that there is a 64% chance that Ethereum will reach a historic high before the end of the year, which will set a good start for its second decade – especially considering that the current record has not been broken since 2021, while Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have reached more recent highs.

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Within this time frame, it is expected that the network will undergo a Fusaka upgrade, and Max Shannon, a senior research assistant at Bitwise, estimates that the upgrade will be launched in November of this year. In the current draft, Fusaka will focus on data efficiency, accessibility, and user experience (UX).

According to the Ethereum roadmap, the Glamsterdam upgrade is expected to be launched in 2026. Victor Zhou, the editor of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) and founder of Namefi, told Decrypt that the upgrade is still in the planning stage, but will greatly enhance network capabilities.

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Ethereum L1 will continue to expand, with the goal of achieving a tenfold expansion within the next 12 months, “said Jason Linehan, Chief Strategy Officer of ConsenSys, to Decrypt. This will complement the L2 expansion roadmap, whose interoperability progress is faster than ever before. ”

Hart Lambur, co-founder of Risk Labs, whose team developed the UMA Oracle service and Across bridging protocol, told Decrypt that interoperability is key to its short-term future.

Ethereum has been extended through a layer two network, but this has disrupted the user experience; moving between different chains remains clumsy and expensive, “Lambur said. Resolving interoperability is a major milestone ahead. Once interoperability becomes seamless, Ethereum will once again feel like a unified network

As the Ethereum ecosystem approaches interoperability, a series of new network upgrades are waiting to be implemented to improve the underlying layer.

In the next five years, upgrades such as’ surge ‘,’ clean up ‘,’ edge ‘,’ purify ‘, and’ squander ‘will bring cheaper transactions, faster processing, stronger MEV (maximum extractable value) protection, and simpler node operations, “said James Toledano, COO of Unity Wallet, to Decrypt. Although not as eye-catching as the merger, these changes address long-standing pain points

Merge, surge, clean up, edge, purify, and squander are loosely defined terms that encompass the improvements that Ethereum may experience, “said TJ Keel, Senior Product Strategy Manager at ConsenSys, regarding Decrypt. Toledano believes that many of these improvements will take root in the next five years.

The first decade of Ethereum was about idealism, “Zhou said to Decrypt. The next decade will be about adoption – bringing cryptocurrency to the general public
Final
As Ethereum celebrates its 15th anniversary, experts believe that institutional adoption will enter phases three and four due to another series of upgrades.

Shannon, a researcher from Bitwise, a provider of Ethereum ETFs, predicts that Ethereum will “complete danksharding, adopt verkle tree state commitment and state expiration” – in layman’s terms, this will reduce node hardware requirements and simplify the network.

Linehan added that ConsenSys’ ‘goal’ is to incorporate zero knowledge proofs as part of the Ethereum underlying protocol. Shannon hopes that such an upgrade can unlock the use of on chain digital IDs to prove “unique personalities” without leaking personal data.

These structural upgrades should drive continuous increase in on chain throughput, institutional adoption, and tokenization of real-world assets, “Shannon added.

In recent years, the institutional adoption of Ethereum has significantly increased, with the passage of US spot ETFs – according to CoinGlass data, the cumulative inflow has exceeded $9.65 billion. But many experts believe that this is just the beginning.

Ethereum has the potential to become the core infrastructure for global financial and digital coordination, “Horizen Labs CEO Rob Vigline said of Decrypt. It is not difficult to imagine that ETH and stablecoins will replace many functions of SWIFT, CashApp, Venmo, Mastercard, and Visa, while tokenized assets will be traded 24/7 on Ethereum based tracks. ”

For Risk Labs’ Lambur, he believes this will manifest as “most assets” being tokenized on Ethereum – think of real-world assets, stocks, and bonds. He pointed out that BlackRock has tokenized the fund on Ethereum, proving that the network is moving in this direction. Lambur said that by doing so, Ethereum would become “the settlement and payment layer for all valuable things on the Internet”.

A new generation of stakeholders will join – we believe, including some of the world’s largest institutions – and they will increasingly accept Ethereum as a public utility, the foundation of the future global economy, “Linehan said to Decrypt. “We see the power of Internet, Web, Linux and other similar systems. When we reach the turning point of global common construction, how powerful is the power of this open system. ”

It will become the foundation of the future global economy, “he added.

Zhou, the editor of the Ethereum improvement proposal, added that the standardization of smart contracts combined with real-world assets will be the key to achieving this leap.

The true endgame is simple: a massive payment and exchange network that connects every blockchain, “he said to Decrypt. My craziest prediction may be that Ethereum becomes boring because it only operates normally as a settlement layer for everything

Will quantum computing destroy everything?
Some experts believe that quantum computing poses a “survival crisis” for major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, as the technology to crack on chain encryption may emerge in less than a decade. However, Linehan stated that ConsenSys is not so concerned about the threat to Ethereum.

We do not believe that quantum computing poses a risk to Ethereum in the short term, “Linehan said to Decrypt. But Ethereum is the most advanced in researching and preparing for transitions

These studies and preparations were initiated in a blog post by Vitalik Buterin in 2024, which outlined possible encryption improvements through the aforementioned ‘splurge’. Since then, Toledano from Unity Wallet has stated that network builders have begun developing new anti quantum encryption schemes in an attempt to stay ahead of any potential threats.

In short, this is a serious challenge for the future, but far from an existential threat, “Toledano added.

If Ethereum can counter the threat of quantum computing, improve user experience, and become the settlement layer of traditional finance, one expert believes that it may eventually surpass Bitcoin – currently, Bitcoin’s market value is five times that of Ethereum.

If the user experience is in place, users will eventually realize it, as they always do, Ethereum will win and surpass Bitcoin, “Amir Forouzani, co-founder of Puffer Labs, an Ethereum infrastructure company, told Decrypt. It’s a better currency, it provides a platform where you can truly own and trust your currency. Flips won’t happen within a cycle, but they will eventually happen