Ethereum Celebrates 10 Years With Over 1.2 million % Price Growth, Institutional Adoption Surge, and Nasdaq Bell Ringing

Business Wire

21 hours ago

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ethereum, the world's second-largest blockchain and leading smart contract platform, celebrates its 10th anniversary today with a track record of growth, reliability and innovation few technologies can rival. Invented in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin and launched in 2015, the network has become one of the most significant technological innovations of the past 10 years. Ether (ETH), Ethereum's native cryptocurrency, was priced at about $0.31 per coin during its 2014 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and now trades around $3,800, a ~1.2 million % increase. This extraordinary decade-long rise underscores Ethereum's evolution from a novel idea into a cornerstone of the digital economy.
To celebrate the milestone, Joseph Lubin, Co-founder of Ethereum, Founder/CEO of Consensys and Chairman of SharpLink, and Dankrad Feist, Protocol Architecture Co-Lead at the Ethereum Foundation, rang the Nasdaq closing bell today in New York City, joined by key figures from both the Ethereum ecosystem and traditional finance institutions. The event symbolized the increasing convergence of traditional and decentralized finance (DeFi).
'Ethereum's future is now. The protocol is poised to undergird not just a new global financial system, but the next wave of innovation across networks of decentralized social graphs, decentralized physical infrastructure, data marketplaces and autonomous AI agents. As regulatory clarity increases, particularly in the U.S., the excitement in and around the ecosystem is palpable. Ethereum is emerging as the foundation for digital trust in an era defined by both decentralization and intelligence. At Consensys, we've never felt more energized or optimistic about what's ahead. This 10-year anniversary marks a celebration of everything we've built: but it's also a launchpad for what comes next,' said Joseph Lubin.
As Ethereum celebrates its first decade, its position as the programmable, secure, and credibly neutral infrastructure for digital money has never been stronger. What began as an open experiment in decentralized computing is now a borderless, transparent financial infrastructure supporting a wide range of real-world use cases. With the world's financial system undergoing rapid transformation, Ethereum is delivering its 'protocol moment'.
From The Merge to Dencun: Ethereum's Path to Scalable, Sustainable Infrastructure
Ethereum's development has been marked by a series of pioneering upgrades, including The Merge (Ethereum's transition from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake), EIP-1559, and Dencun, which introduced modular data availability and radically reduced L2 transaction costs, all while maintaining zero downtime since the protocol's genesis. These milestones made Ethereum not only greener but also more scalable and economically sustainable. Since the launch of Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake Beacon Chain in December 2020, the number of active validators has grown from just over 21,000 to more than 1.1 million in 2025. This significant increase reflects the network's deepening decentralization and its ability to scale securely as institutional and community participation expands. With over $25 trillion in transaction volume in 2024 alone, Ethereum has cemented itself as the global settlement layer for programmable money, underpinning DeFi, stablecoins, DAOs, and new emerging categories like AI agents and onchain identity.
Institutional Confidence at All-Time High
Since The Merge in September 2022, the total ETH staked on the Beacon Chain has grown from ~13 million ETH to over 33 million ETH, representing a more than 150% increase and over $120 billion USD in locked capital. Institutional players now hold over 60% of this staked ETH, with exchanges, custodians, and funds anchoring their strategies in Ethereum's infrastructure. This shift reflects what the 2025 Trustware report from Consensys terms 'the industrialization of trust', a broad move from experimental DeFi to scalable, institutional-grade blockchain systems. Ethereum is a new kind of software: Trustware. And Trustware tools, like MetaMask's web3 self-custodial wallet and Linea's Ethereum-aligned L2, are helping scale usage while maintaining user sovereignty.
Ringing the Nasdaq Bell: At the Crossroads of Traditional and Decentralized Finance
Today's bell ringing follows the approval and launch of ETH ETFs in the United States and Europe last year, another sign of mainstream financial integration. Ethereum's evolution into a trusted global financial infrastructure is also underscored by the launch of Ethereum-native treasury strategies through organizations like SharpLink.
The next 10 years will be defined by further convergence between public blockchain innovation and institutional-grade infrastructure. And if the last decade is any indication, Ethereum will remain at the heart of that evolution.
About Consensys
Consensys is the leading Ethereum software company, building the infrastructure, tools, and protocols that power the world's largest decentralized ecosystem. Founded in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, Consensys has played a foundational role in Ethereum's growth, from pioneering products like MetaMask and Infura to shaping protocol development and staking infrastructure. Today, Consensys continues to lead Ethereum's evolution through strategic R&D, and direct contributions to network upgrades like the Merge and Pectra. With a global product suite, and deep roots across the ecosystem, Consensys is uniquely positioned to accelerate Ethereum's role as the trust layer for a new global economy, one that is decentralized, programmable, and open to all. To learn more, visit consensys.io.