Ethereum's Tenth Anniversary: The Evolution from "World Computer" to Financial Infrastructure

On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum mainnet officially launched. Ten years have passed, and this ambitious "world computer" project has undergone multiple narrative shifts, ultimately becoming a settlement layer primarily focused on financial applications.

In the early days, Ethereum represented a form of technological idealism. Developers believed that through smart contracts, they could create a digital utopia governed entirely by code. However, the 2016 The DAO incident exposed the inherent contradictions of this idealism.

The ICO boom in 2017 brought an unexpected identity crisis to Ethereum. Originally designed as a general-purpose computing platform, Ethereum suddenly became a simple token issuance tool. This disparity between reality and vision constituted the first significant fracture in the narrative of Ethereum.

The explosion of DeFi in 2020 made the entire ecosystem realize: finance may not be a compromise choice for Ethereum, but rather its natural mission. From "world computer" to "global financial settlement layer", Ether has found its market positioning.

However, the success of DeFi has also exposed the performance bottleneck of Ethereum. In response to this challenge, Ethereum has begun to embrace modular design, expanding network capacity through Layer 2 solutions. This adjustment in the technical approach essentially reflects a shift in narrative.

In the face of the rise of the new generation of public chains, the Ether community has begun to emphasize "orthodoxy" and security. However, the market's reaction has been unexpectedly lukewarm, and users seem to care more about practicality than the degree of decentralization. This forces Ethereum to rethink its value proposition.

Recently, the rise of RWA( Real World Assets ) has provided Ether with an opportunity for narrative reconstruction. From "changing finance" to "connecting reality", Ether attempts to tell a more pragmatic story that is closer to the mainstream world. This shift from idealism to pragmatism reflects a new understanding of market demands.

Over the past decade, the evolution of Ether has been both a story of technological development and a process of constant collision and reconciliation between ideals and reality. From disruption to integration, from revolution to reform, the experience of Ether showcases how blockchain technology seeks a foothold in the real world.

In the future, what will truly bring Ether to billions of users may not only be its technological capabilities, but more importantly, how the real world chooses to apply this technology. From vision to implementation, this may be the final direction of the Ether narrative evolution and will also define the future development trajectory of the entire crypto industry.