On July 30, 2025, the Ethereum Mainnet will celebrate its tenth anniversary milestone. Since the birth of the Genesis Block in 2015, Ethereum has become the second largest blockchain network in the world, thanks to its revolutionary smart contracts functionality. Over the past decade, Ethereum has profoundly changed the application scope of blockchain technology, driving innovation waves from ICOs to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), significantly impacting various fields such as finance, art, and governance.

However, along with its outstanding achievements, Ethereum also faces ongoing challenges, including network scalability bottlenecks, high Gas fees, and security risks.

The story of Ethereum began in 2013, conceived and proposed by Vitalik Buterin. The project was launched through crowdfunding the following year and officially went live on the Mainnet on July 30, 2015. The core innovation of Ethereum lies in the introduction of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which is a Turing-complete runtime environment that allows developers to write complex decentralized applications (DApp). This groundbreaking feature distinguishes Ethereum from early blockchain projects like Bitcoin, ushering in a new era of "programmable blockchain."

According to a report from the OKX Research Institute, as of the first half of 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is showing strong growth momentum. Approximately 350,000 new wallets are joining the network each week, and in the first quarter, the number of wallets participating in on-chain governance voting reached a record high of 6.1 million, fully demonstrating the activity of the Ethereum ecosystem and the continuous expansion of its user base.

The smart contract technology of Ethereum has given rise to multiple revolutionary application scenarios. From 2016 to 2018, we witnessed the explosive growth of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), which provided new funding channels for countless blockchain projects. Subsequently, the rise of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) further demonstrated the immense potential of smart contracts in financial innovation, bringing unprecedented challenges and opportunities to the traditional financial system.