After completing 10 years, what to expect from the leading blockchain in the cryptocurrency market

To understand the future of Ethereum, it is useful to start with its creator, Vitalik Buterin. Before launching Ethereum in 2015, he saw blockchains not only as the foundation for digital money but as tools for identity, coordination, public trust, and much more.

In a 2021 interview on The Tim Ferriss Show, Buterin described Ethereum as “dynamic and growing… an evolving creature.” This adaptive nature still defines the network today.

The future of Ethereum: after 10 years, the project moves from promises to fundamentals

On its 10th anniversary, we asked voices from across the community: what could the next decade of the project look like?

Ethereum as 'Trustware'

Founded by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, Consensys has been instrumental in shaping the network's infrastructure. In its latest report, the foundation outlines an ambitious timeline for the future of blockchain.

We spoke with chief economist Mallesh Pai, one of the report's authors, about Ethereum's long-term trajectory:

“In the next 5 to 10 years, Ethereum will cease to be the leading smart contract platform in the world to become the foundational layer of the future global economy... Growth will be driven by the digitization of assets, starting with stablecoins and moving up the risk scale from there.”

As assets migrate to blockchains, trade will follow, said Pai. But he emphasized that this advantage depends as much on current contributors as on a new generation of institutional and commercial builders.

Institutional trust

Although Bitcoin is more commonly seen as a treasury asset in public companies, many are adopting Ether, Ethereum's native token. The digital media and technology company GameSquare is among those betting heavily on the long-term future of the network.

“We invest in Ether because we believe it is the most reliable long-term digital asset, aligned with the future of the internet.” While other blockchains may offer lower fees or greater speed, Ethereum leads due to its “community and composability,” said GameSquare CEO Justin Kenna.

Ethereum is evolving into “the financial and cultural backbone of the internet, powering everything from global payments and asset management to entertainment intellectual property, gaming economies, and digital identity,” Kenna stated. “It will be the infrastructure layer that allows major global brands to connect with their audiences.”

Real-world data and the future of DeFi

RedStone, a modular blockchain oracle network, provides real-world data for smart contracts. But co-founder Marcin Kaźmierczak sees Ethereum going far beyond DeFi in the next decade.

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“Ethereum is likely to evolve into the foundational layer of institutional finance and the tokenization of real-world assets,” he says.

“We will see great advances in scalability through the continuous development of layer two (L2) solutions, expansion of the base layer (L1), and possibly new virtual machines on the network, making Ethereum more accessible to large-scale developers.”

Kaźmierczak predicts a shift to seamless integration with blockchain, where users interact with Ethereum-based services without realizing it, just as they do with AI today. “The true metric of success will not be TVL or gas fees,” he stated, “but how invisible yet essential Ethereum will become for global finance.”

Scaling Ethereum for the corporate era

Optimism, a layer two solution built on Ethereum, predicts that the next decade will be marked by the migration of companies to blockchains.

“In the next 10 years, all major companies will migrate on-chain, and most will vertically integrate into their own infrastructure on Ethereum,” said Sam McIngvale, head of product at OP Labs, to Cointelegraph.

With greater regulatory clarity, institutions, payment companies, and fintechs are beginning to build. “Companies need strong, secure, and flexible infrastructure to thrive,” he stated.

Developers will drive the future of Ethereum

For Nemil Dalal, head of the developer platform at Coinbase, the long-term success of Ethereum depends on usability and the builder community.

“Thinking about the next 10 years, I believe Ethereum will be the foundation for new use cases… like AI agents conducting transactions on our behalf, richer on-chain social communities, and gaming.”

What gives you more confidence?

“The builders,” he said. “The Ethereum community has always been there to experiment, innovate, and deliver, and that is what will continue to drive its advancement.”

From experiment to infrastructure

There are different visions of what’s next, but there is one common point: Ethereum is evolving from a smart contract platform to a fundamental layer of real-world assets, corporate systems, and everyday digital interactions.

If the first decade was dedicated to exploring what blockchains could do, the next may be about Ethereum quietly becoming essential to the functioning of the world.