Ethereum white paper turns 11, celebrating blockchain’s ‘foundational’ layer

The first iteration of Ethereum’s foundational technical document, the white paper, has turned 11 years old.

The first iteration of the document , also called the “proto-white paper” was first shared by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in November 2013, in an email titled ‘Introducing Ethereum: a generalized smart contract/DAC platform.’

This marks the first time the Ethereum white paper was shared, although Buterin made some minor changes, before releasing the first version on Ethereum’s website, called a “next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform,” inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto’s development of the Bitcoin network in 2009.

Ethereum white paper. Source: Ethereum.org

Buterin’s innovations introduced the concept of self-executing, blockchain-based smart contracts, which laid the foundation for all the emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) applications such as yield-farming, decentralized lending, borrowing and staking.

The 11-year anniversary is another testament to the growing utility of DeFi, which is increasingly becoming a financial paradigm next to the banking system, according to James Wo, the founder and CEO of DFG. Wo told Cointelegraph:

“DeFi enabled services like lending and swapping without any centralized intermediary, providing an alternative to traditional banking systems in a trustless and transparent manner.”

Top protocol categories on Ethereum. Source: DefiLlama

Lending is the second-largest protocol category on Ethereum, worth a combined $32.8 billion in total value locked (TVL) across 460 protocols, according to DefiLlama data .

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Ethereum smart contracts: revolutionizing financial services and more

While smart contracts and DeFi are disintermediating the financial services sector, Ethereum introduced significant innovation for other industries as well.

The travel and tourism industry has also benefited from the world’s first smart contract platform, according to Pablo Castillo, CEO and chief technology officer of Chain4Travel, who told Cointelegraph:

“By bringing smart contracts to life, Ethereum filled a crucial gap in industries like travel and tourism, where payments and ticketing processes rely on multiple APIs and lack a single source of truth. Moreover, with smart contracts, multiple manual operations can be optimized and simplified for seamless user experience.” 

Over the next 10 years, Ethereum will solidify its role as DeFi’s “foundational infrastructure layer,” but solving its current interoperability challenges will be crucial for its continued adoption, added Castillo.

Due to the siloed nature of blockchain networks, cross-chain interoperability is a significant technical challenge. This fragmentation is a growing user experience issue for crypto holders since bridging assets between layer-1 networks like Ethereum is costly and carries security risks.

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Ethereum institutional adoption in the next 10 years

During the first 10 years, Ethereum became the home for millions of smart contracts and thousands of decentralized applications (DApps) .

Ethereum’s rapid adoption will likely accelerate in the next 10 years, especially among institutions, according to Alex Mizrahi, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the Chromia blockchain platform.

He told Cointelegraph:

“In the next 10 years, I only see this accelerating, with Ethereum continuing to be a foundational piece of the blockchain industry, and developers continuing to build on and iterate what Ethereum has done. I see increased institutional adoption, mainstream use cases, and improvements in the user experience and usability of blockchain.”

However, facilitating the next wave of adoption will require more robust security measures, according to Eskil Tsu, co-founder of GoPlus Web3 security solution, who wrote:

"The next 10 years will demand more robust protection and more exciting education to keep users safe as innovations like rollups and sharding drive new possibilities. The new builders need to prioritize security. That's the road to 1 billion users."

Hack and cyberattacks are a growing concern in the crypto space. Crypto hackers stole nearly $19 billion across 785 reported hacks , in the 13 years since June 2019, according to a Crystal Intelligence report shared with Cointelegraph.

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