Year-in-Ethereum

By Josh Stark & Evan Van Ness Ethereum is the foundation for a digital civilization. It is hardened, secure, and reliable. It is the bedrock necessary to support the digital cities being built on top of it. Those cities are growing fast. Because Ethereum is open to everyone, many different users have found reasons to build on it: Markets use it as financial infrastructure Artists use it to give permanence to their work Assets use it as a settlement layer Communities use it to govern shared resources This year Ethereum applications exploded into public consciousness. The old term “web3” became fashionable again as the world began to understand the vision of a more decentralized internet built on Ethereum. ...

Ethereum is the digital frontier. Because it is open and programmable, Ethereum offers a vast uncharted expanse filled with opportunity. Over the last few years, this frontier has attracted its first major settlements. The freewheeling bazaar of decentralized finance (“DeFi”) has grown into a sector that is beginning to compete with Silicon Valley. This year, a second ecosystem began to put down roots: the creator economy of cryptoart, music, and media. ...

Ethereum began as a blank canvas. Ethereum is an open, permissionless blockchain that developers can use to create any kind of application they want. This year, the early strokes laid down on that canvas began to form into a coherent picture. You don’t have to squint so much to see the direction Ethereum is going. Protocols and applications built on Ethereum are beginning to find product-market fit, quickly building communities of thousands of paying users. ...