10 ways Ethereum has changed encryption in the past decade

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Ethereum, BeInCrypto will comprehensively review the 10 most important contributions of this revolutionary blockchain to the cryptocurrency industry.

These contributions include smart contracts, ERC-20, EVM, and other important standards, Layer-2 protocols, DAO governance, and how they impact DeFi, ICO, NFT, meme coins, ETFs, and much more. Ethereum has done a lot for us.

Ten years of Ethereum

Since Vitalik Buterin first launched Ethereum ten years ago, smart contracts have become a key feature of this blockchain. Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, allowed for smart contracts, but Satoshi Nakamoto primarily focused on its decentralized and trustless structure.

In contrast, Ethereum introduced Solidity, a programming language specifically designed for smart contracts.

After ten years, it is truly difficult to quantify the impact of Ethereum's smart contracts. They remain one of the most powerful features of blockchain, and other protocols have significantly diversified this field.

Although we cannot know how many ETH smart contracts currently exist, the explosive growth in unique addresses speaks for itself.

The EVM standard ( Ethereum Virtual Machine ) has driven the development of smart contracts. The EVM manages how these protocols operate, processes transactions, monitors the global ecosystem of ETH, and much more.

This standard helps Ethereum operate for users around the world, opening up new possibilities for decentralized finance.

Ethereum is revolutionizing token creation and the use of blockchain

The ERC-20 standard is one of the important contributions of Ethereum in the past ten years. Before ERC-20, creating tokens on the blockchain was a fragmented and inconsistent process.

By standardizing new rules among tokens, Ethereum has opened the way to create over one million fungible, interchangeable assets that can interact with each other.

Thanks to ERC-20, Ethereum is Tether's preferred blockchain for issuing USDT tokens. USDT is the most popular stablecoin in the world, making this particularly impressive.

Academic papers have attempted to quantify the impact of this standard on the cryptocurrency industry, but it has undeniably had a positive impact.

Furthermore, Ethereum's ability to store Layer-2 protocols has revolutionized the industry over the past decade. These protocols can build solutions for many issues, especially the scalability problem, within the framework of classical blockchains.

Nowadays, even Bitcoin has many L2 protocols, but Ethereum was the first to specialize in them.

The ICO Boom and the Birthplace of DeFi

One special benefit of ERC-20 is the ICO boom in the late 2010s. With this new standard, protocols such as ChainLink and Basic Attention Token have used it to launch their LINK and BAT tokens.

Nowadays, some of these protocols have surpassed Ethereum in development activity, highlighting their importance over the past decade.

Amid these technological advancements, the dynamic community and the ability to host decentralized exchanges, Ethereum can be regarded as the birthplace of DeFi.

Its tools and infrastructure have enabled a community to develop a trustless economic infrastructure in practice. Its DAO governance model has promoted financial democracy on an unprecedented scale.

Hart Lambur, Co-founder of Risk Labs, shared some thoughts on the impact of Ethereum on DeFi in an exclusive comment with BeInCrypto:

"The ultimate goal is really quite simple: A massive payment and exchange network that connects every blockchain. If most assets become tokens – money, stocks, bonds, real estate – Ethereum will become the payment layer for everything of value on the internet," Lambur declared.

The total value locked on the Ethereum blockchain has increased significantly over the past ten years:

NFTs, memes, ETFs and much more

These factors have combined to make Ethereum the undeniable home of NFTs, something that was completely unheard of ten years ago.

By combining self-executing smart contracts, a DeFi-oriented community, and a few new token standards, ETH became the center of the NFT boom in 2021. These products remain important to this day, further showcasing the influence of Ethereum.

Although Dogecoin is the first meme coin, launched over ten years ago, Ethereum's Shiba Inu has revived this sector. These two coins look similar, but Ethereum's DeFi infrastructure and community have created a new wave.

Ethereum developers do not directly create meme coins, but their work has played an important role in shaping the meme-filled space that we know and love today.

Finally, Ethereum has maintained its important second position in another key area. Bitcoin had the first spot ETF approved in the US, but ETH followed a few months later.

This approval indicates that the SEC under Gary Gensler will allow more altcoin products, and a wave of active applications is currently flowing in. Furthermore, ETH ETFs are now surpassing BTC ETFs.

In summary, Ethereum has done a lot for cryptocurrency in the past ten years. It has proven to be a complete departure from Bitcoin, with a host of features enabling a new world.

Ethereum has influenced every aspect of the cryptocurrency community, both present and past. With current acceptance, the contribution of blockchain to the cryptocurrency economy is likely to remain important for many years or decades to come.

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