jakiro
Deng Tong, Bitchain Vision
Ten years of making swords is not only hard, but also opens up borders.Ethereum has traveled ten years and developed from a test site for niche geeks to a bridge connecting blockchain technology and real finance.As the tide rises and falls in the crypto tide, countless projects float and fall, Ethereum has been washed by time, becoming more and more stable as a rock and a brilliant galaxy.
1. The origin of fate
From a young genius to seeing one’s nature
Vitalik may have that trait—standing in the crowd, people can capture him at a glance.A slender figure, a slightly melancholy blue eyes, tolerance and gentleness in peace…
People always like to listen to stories of genius genius, and Vitalik’s character seems to be completely consistent with this: he started exploring Excel on computers at the age of 4; he learned programming at the age of 8; he spoke at the age of 9-10; he developed video games at the age of 10-11; he came into contact with Bitcoin at the age of 17; he created Ethereum at the age of 19… However, Vitalik is now 31 years old, and the halo of “young wizard” has been obscured in the ten years that Ethereum has gone through, turning into a fire of belief that has never been extinguished in the ups and downs of the industry.
Before Vitalik came into contact with Bitcoin, he was once obsessed with World of Warcraft.Starting from 2007, he transformed into a warlock and traveled through the continent of Azeroth, enjoying it in the game.But three years later, Blizzard updated the game and deleted the “Life Siphon” skill.Vitalik was very dissatisfied with this and even complained to Blizzard many times.However, the complaint failed to resolve Vitalik’s demands, and Vitalik finally angrily deleted the game and questioned the centralized system.
Until the age of 17, Bitcoin completely changed the life of this “gaming boy”.For Vitalik, exposure to Bitcoin may be more like a Zen enlightenment – an instant “understanding the mind and seeing the nature”.Bitcoin seems to be more in line with his worldview: there is no centralized organization, no boundaries, and complete freedom… Since then, Vitalik has begun to write articles for Bitcoin Weekly and receive a 5BTC royalty per article.In the same year, Vitalik and Mihai Alisie co-founded Bitcoin Magazine. As the founder, he kept writing. The large amount of thinking and writing integration gave him a deeper understanding of the development of encryption technology, which directly laid a solid foundation for the subsequent creation of Ethereum.
Ethereum was born at the Bitcoin Conference in North America
Ethereum was born in an accidental collision of inspiration at an industry gathering.In January 2014, the North American Bitcoin Conference was held in Miami. Participants gathered in a villa to have a more comprehensive conception of the “air computer” described by Vitalik. The three masters of Ethereum – the proposer of Ethereum’s core idea, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, and Ethereum chief technology officer Gavin Wood, gathered at this time.
In the following months, the founders jointly built the conceptual framework of Ethereum, proposed the idea of raising funds, and defined the future trajectory of this “computer at the center of the world”.
Unlike Vitalik’s success in his youth, Lubin seems to be more suitable for the four words of “high-end” description.Born in 1964, Lubin seems to be more like a “parent” who can manage this team.When he met Vitalik, Lubin was already 49 years old, but their encounter was more like Boyaziqi. Lubin once publicly stated: “Vitalik’s paper is the best paper I have ever read.” In this startup team, Lubin is obviously playing the role of a “strategic forward-looking man”: building an Ethereum organizational structure, finding partners, raising funds, coordinating activities… and believes that Ethereum cannot have only blockchain, but also a huge ecological system.The keen sense of smell of this forward-looking person lays a solid foundation for Ethereum to grow into a trillion-level ecosystem in the future.
Wood is perhaps the core developer with the most “ordinary” resume of the three: his PhD seems to have long been destined to make outstanding contributions to the technological development of Ethereum.Born in the UK in 1980, Wood has a Ph.D. in computer science. He focuses on developing smart contracts, writing the “Ethereum Yellow Book”, outlines the technical architecture of the Ethereum protocol and virtual machines, and develops the Solidity programming language…
The inspirational collision of Ethereum’s three heroes after the Bitcoin conference not only made Ethereum come out of nowhere, but also rewritten the development process of the crypto world and opened a new chapter in the crypto world.
2. Fate separation
An insurmountable gap: commercial interests vs. public interests
Ethereum initially had eight founders, and these eight founders were quickly divided into two camps: to build Ethereum into a profitable enterprise and continue to let Ethereum operate in a non-profit organizational state.
There seems to be an insurmountable gap between Vitalik and Lubin on this issue.Vitalik wants to maintain Ethereum’s non-profit nature, while Lubin tends to make Ethereum a business.An industry insider once accurately explained the contradiction between Lubin and Vitalik: “Lubin’s interests are not exactly the same as Vitalik, because he is more like a financial person who pursues business interests. Vitalik is a visionary and is pursuing the public interest.”
The conflict between the two broke out completely in 2014.In June 2014, members of the core Ethereum team discussed signing a document that would convert Ethereum into a profitable company.Vitalik is full of idealism and insists on continuing to operate as a non-profit organization. He hopes to change the rules of the real world through blockchain technology, break the centralized monopoly of power, and achieve equality for everyone in the face of technology.However, Lubin is more inclined to explore the commercial value of Ethereum, hoping to achieve larger-scale application through capital-driven Ethereum ecosystem construction.
Following the meeting, Vitalik announced that Ethereum will operate in a non-profit foundation model.Due to different concepts, Lubin officially left Ethereum in November 2014 and founded ConsenSys in the same month, and Lubin, one of the soul figures in the Ethereum Foundation, officially left.
Disputed resignation: shortage of funds or budget cuts
There have been many different opinions on the reasons for Wood’s resignation.Most people speculate that Wood was forced to leave due to funding shortages from the Ethereum Foundation.But in fact, the reason for Wood’s resignation should be directly related to executive director Ming Chan.After taking office, the executive director set out to cut funding, underfunding the ETHDEV project led by Wood.This directly led to the end of Wood’s departure from Ethereum at the end of 2015.
After leaving Ethereum, Wood quickly created Parity Technologies and developed the Parity Ethereum client, allowing users to efficiently access Ethereum nodes.In 2016, Wood created the Polkadot project. Four years later, the Polkadot main network was officially launched, setting off a wave of attention in the crypto world.
At this point, the three giants of Ethereum parted ways, and only Vitalik was still sticking to his original dream. The little boy who resolutely deleted the game of Warcraft continued to remain silent and settled in the idealistic world.The transformation from “chasing outward” to “caring inward” has been completely completed, making the Ethereum market still as clear as before and the situation is clear.
3. Reunion
Ethereum that changes the world
Lubin once commented on Vatilik: “Vitalik really doesn’t care about material things at all. He just wants to change the world.” Now, Ethereum has been running smoothly for ten years, and it has really become a changer in the crypto world.
When Ethereum was officially launched in July 2015, it hoped to become a “decentralized computing platform beyond Bitcoin”. This vision continues to provide power for Ethereum and leads the wave of iterative development of the crypto industry again and again.
The first carnival in the crypto world was the initial token issuance boom in 2017, which directly rewritten the narrative logic of Ethereum – any project can issue tokens based on Ethereum.
In 2018, the initial token issuance bubble burst, and the tokens of countless projects returned to zero and disappeared.Ethereum turns to a period of deep technology cultivation: Constantinople upgrades to reduce block rewards, Istanbul updates to optimize the Gas fee structure.Network congestion and scalability have become issues of concern to developers.How to improve the performance of smart contracts and how to break through zero-knowledge proof technology have become important things that need to be discussed after waking up from a loss of wealth.
After two years of dormant, Ethereum once again led the “DeFi summer” in 2020.Uniswap, Aave and other decentralized financial projects built on Ethereum stand out.Ethereum is trying to cover areas without traditional financial penetration and use decentralized technology to save financial deserts.It is this ideal of financial accessibility that has driven the accelerated layout of multi-functional wallets, including OKX Wallet.As one of the world’s leading decentralized wallets, OKX Wallet not only opens up multi-chain asset management, DApp interaction, and NFT cross-chain transactions, but also provides a low-threshold one-stop Web3 portal for financial edge users.
Subsequently, the NFT explosion occurred in 2021, and artworks became the new favorites in the crypto market for a while.CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club were once popular all over the Internet, and Beeple’s digital painting “Every Day: The First 5,000 Days” sold for $69 million.The narrative of digital ownership once again made the capital market re-understand Ethereum, which led a financial revolution of digital civilization this year.
In September 2022, Ethereum “merged” and moved from PoW to PoS, ending the long-ccused energy consumption problem of Ethereum.The Ethereum merger proves that blockchain technology can find a balance between “decentralization, security, and sustainability”.
In July 2024, Ethereum ETFs entered people’s vision, which is the perfect link between Ethereum and traditional finance – traditional financial giants are constantly increasing their acceptance of crypto assets.The success of the application of Ethereum spot ETF by eight asset management institutions under BlackRock, including ishares, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, Bitwise, 21Shares, Fidelity, Invesco, etc., has lowered the threshold for investment in cryptocurrency assets for ordinary investors and promoted the process of cryptocurrency compliance.It is of great significance to the future development of the entire Ethereum ecosystem and even the entire blockchain industry.
This year, companies represented by Sharplink and others have been buying Ethereum, and Ethereum has once again become one of the choices for crypto treasury reserves – this is essentially a strategic bet on the value of the Ethereum ecosystem…
Today’s Ethereum is not a niche geek world that only focuses on technological iteration, but has long grown into a “value conversion bridge” between crypto assets and traditional finance under the support of technological iteration.Since then, Ethereum has spent ten years growing from a pure technological concept written only in a white paper to a sea of digital ecology that can accommodate all rivers.As the helmator, Vitalik did not choose to rise and fall in the business world, but instead worked silently, abandoned the outside world’s fanatical attitude towards crypto assets, and found a very inclusive iteration and upgrading path for Ethereum between ideals and reality.
ConsenSys without changing the background color
If your dream cannot be realized through Ethereum, then create another “Ethereum” of your own.Lubin, which left Ethereum, created ConsenSys, a blockchain and Web3 software company, which still uses Ethereum as the background to provide products and services.
Several celebrity products launched by ConsenSys have sparked splashes.MetaMask wallet has been popular in the industry since its launch in 2016, making it easier for users to interact with Ethereum DApps and is an important entrance for users to enter the Ethereum ecosystem.However, as time goes by, other public chains have risen rapidly, and the disadvantages of MetaMask appear: First, MetaMask was originally presented in the form of browser plug-ins, which is mainly convenient for PC users to use, and the mobile experience is poor; secondly, early wallet users had to switch wallets to trade when accessing public chains such as Solana. It was not until May this year that MetaMask announced the integration of Solana.In order to bring users a better product experience, major exchanges have deployed internal wallet ecosystems on exchanges. The wallet products of leading exchanges such as OKX and Coinbase are very eye-catching. OKX has become the North Star of the exchange wallet track with its excellent product characteristics and technical guarantees.In particular, OKX Wallet deeply optimizes the mobile experience, taking into account both security and convenience, has become the first choice for more and more Web3 users.On the way Ethereum moves from technological belief to large-scale implementation, these infrastructures that adhere to “long-termism” are playing an indispensable role. They are not profit-seekers in the hustle and bustle, but builders with deep stillness.
Not just wallets, Infura launched by ConsenSys provides API services to access Ethereum nodes to help developers quickly deploy DApps; Diligence, a smart contract audit service product, not only performs manual code audits, but also provides automation tools to check common errors and vulnerabilities in smart contracts; the open source blockchain protocol Quorum provides a feasible path for enterprises to build private or consortium chains based on Ethereum…
This year, Lubin has seized market hotspots and served as chairman of the board of directors of SharpLink Gaming.Lead SharpLink to the path of Ethereum treasury reserve.On May 27, SharpLink announced its Ethereum treasury reserve plan, and its stock price rose by more than 650% on the same day.Since then, SharpLink has launched a staking strategy and almost all Ethereum is used to stake in major protocols.Currently, Sharplink’s annualized staking income is about 3% – 4%.Not only does it earn profits through pledge, it is also deeply bound to Ethereum, accelerating the integration between traditional enterprises and the crypto industry.
Currently, the average yield on pledged Ethereum is 3%-5%.The possibility of the Fed’s interest rate cut is increasing, and investing through pledge of Ethereum is undoubtedly a wise move.Major exchanges have launched Ethereum pledge services to facilitate ordinary users to participate in pledge, such as BETH, a pledged investment product launched by OKX.
ConsenSys was born for Ethereum and was born for Ethereum; Lubin came from Ethereum and was born for Ethereum.Because of its business dream, Lubin left Ethereum; because of its Ethereum dream, ConsenSys stood tall on the top of Crypto Mountain with a kingly attitude.This tacit understanding is also a sincere and unique romance of the Ethereum ecosystem.
The sharp edge in every beam of light
Many people may not know what the word “ether” means – “a hypothetical invisible medium that is spread throughout the universe and allows light to propagate.”When Vitalik named Ethereum, he might have expected that Ethereum could one day become the preacher behind the industry, “Only there is no self in everything, there can be me everywhere.”
From a geek dream boy who wrote the Ethereum white paper at the age of 19 to a low-profile helm in his thirties, Vitalik’s growth process and Ethereum’s narrative iteration path are mirrored by each other.Ethereum has gone through twists and turns, traveling through the bull and bear cycle, from the three Ethereum masters to the two Ethereum heroes. In a roundabout way, Lubin is still contributing to the construction of Ethereum, and Vitalik continues to realize its pure and clear technical ideal.
After ten years, the sharpness is revealed.The real strength does not lie in whether you can stand in the center of the stage, but in whether you can have the power to support the entire stage; the real ideal does not lie in whether you can always shake the flag and shout, but whether you can keep things silent as always.Ethereum is now spread throughout the crypto ecosystem, allowing countless possibilities to be created in the crypto world.It may not be a beam of light itself, but every beam of light has its sharpness.
