Ethereum enters its second decade after a year of upheaval at the foundation Few periods in Ethereum’s 11-year history have brought as much change, from leadership shakeups at the Ethereum Foundation to institutional adoption, as the past year has. – Ethereum’s 11th year was…
fined by a dramatic transformation of the Ethereum Foundation, with leadership departures, layoffs, a new CROPS mandate, and the spinout of EthLabs, Ethereum Systems, and Ethereum Institutional as the organization sought to decentralize its own role in the ecosystem. – Despite the internal overhaul, Ethereum continued advancing technically and institutionally, rolling out the Fusaka upgrade while attracting deeper Wall Street adoption through BlackRock, JPMorgan, growing tokenized assets, and more than $11.23 billion in cumulative inflows into U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs. On July 30, 2015, Ethereum launched with an ambitious vision: to become a decentralized world computer
Eleven years later, the blockchain has evolved into the base layer for billions of dollars in tokenized assets and the settlement layer underpinning much of decentralized finance. Yet as Ethereum enters its second decade, the story is no longer just about the network itself. It is also about the institution that has helped steward it since the beginning, and how that institution has been fundamentally reshaped over the last year.
Few periods in Ethereum’s history have brought as much change to the Ethereum Foundation as the past year has. What began as mounting frustration from developers, investors and community members over the foundation’s pace of execution ultimately became the catalyst for the most significant organizational overhaul since Ethereum’s launch. Leadership changes, staff departures and structural reforms have transformed not only how the foundation operates, but also the nature of its role within an ecosystem that has grown far beyond any single organization.