Ethereum celebrates its ninth birthday today.
The network, launched was co-founded on July 30, 2015 by several prominent crypto stakeholders, including Vitalik Buterin, Polkadot’s founder Gavin Wood, Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin, and Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson.
It has been that way ever since becoming the second largest blockchain with a huge ecosystem that has spawned many copy-cats. According to Etherscanthe network has processed 2.45 billion transactions in 20.4 million blocks during its nine-year existence.
Dune Analytics facts reveals a more comprehensive picture, showing that this is the case had over 7 million active users and over 1 million validators last month. Moreover, DeFillama facts showed that there are more than 1,000 projects on the blockchain with approximately $71 billion in assets locked on the network.
Moreover, its market capitalization now exceeds $400 billion, putting the company among the top top 25 global assets. The price of ETH has also risen to over $3,000, making it one of the most expensive digital assets in the crypto market.
Ethereum has also cemented itself as a prominent player in the crypto industry by introducing several innovations and upgrades, including the successful implementation of the Merge and Dencun hard forks. These upgrades transitioned the network from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and dramatically reduced transaction costs to record lows.
Furthermore, the recent launch of spot Ethereum Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) products in the United States makes it the only digital asset, besides Bitcoin, approved for trading by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on US exchanges.
Crypto exchange Coinbase underlined the importance of the network to the broader crypto industry, noting that Ethereum is the anchor of an entire onchain ecosystem that has helped pave the way for decentralized finance.
Despite these achievements, Buterin remains focused on the future and expresses his expectations for developments in the coming decade. He wrote:
“I look forward to seeing what the next decade brings.”