To understand Ethereum’s future, it helps to start with its creator, Vitalik Buterin. Before launching Ethereum in 2015, he saw blockchains not just as the foundation for digital money, but as tools for identity, coordination, public trust and more.
In a 2021 interview on The Tim Ferriss Show, Buterin described Ethereum as “dynamic and growing… an evolving creature.” That adaptive nature still defines the network today.
On its 10-year anniversary, we asked voices from across the community: What might the next decade look like?
Consensys: Ethereum as “Trustware”
Founded by Ethereum co-creator Joseph Lubin, Consensys has been instrumental in shaping the network’s infrastructure. In its latest report, the Foundation outlines an ambitious roadmap for Ethereum’s future.
We spoke with chief economist Mallesh Pai, one of the report’s authors, about Ethereum’s long-term trajectory:
“Over the next 5–10 years, Ethereum will go from the world’s leading smart contract platform to the base layer of the future global economy… Growth will be driven by the digitization of assets, starting with stablecoins and moving up the risk stack from there.”
As assets migrate onchain, Pai said, commerce will follow. But he emphasized that this advantage depends on both current contributors and a new generation of institutional and commercial builders.
Institutional confidence: GameSquare’s bet on ETH
While Bitcoin (BTC) is more commonly seen among publicly traded companies’ treasury assets, many are adopting Ether (ETH) Ethereum’s native token. Digital media and technology company GameSquare is among those betting big on Ethereum’s long-term future.
“We invested in ETH because we believe it’s the most credible long-term digital asset aligned with where the internet is headed.” While other chains may offer lower fees or faster speeds, Ethereum leads because of its “community and composability,” GameSquare’s CEO, Justin Kenna, told Cointelegraph.
Ethereum is evolving into “the financial and cultural backbone of the internet—powering everything from global payments and asset management to entertainment IP, gaming economies, and digital identity,” Kenna said. “It will be the infrastructure layer that powers how major global brands connect with their audiences.”
RedStone: real-world data and the future of DeFi
RedStone, a modular blockchain oracle network, provides real-world data to smart contracts. But co-founder Marcin Kaźmierczak sees Ethereum moving well beyond DeFi in the decade ahead.
“Ethereum will likely evolve into the foundational layer for institutional finance and real-world asset tokenization,” he said.
“We’ll see major improvements in scalability through continued L2 development, scaling the base L1 layer and potentially new Virtual Machines on top of the network that make Ethereum more accessible to developers at scale.”
Kaźmierczak predicts a shift toward seamless blockchain integration, where users interact with Ethereum-powered services without realizing it — just as they do today with AI. “The real success metric won’t be TVL or gas fees,” he said, “but how invisible yet essential Ethereum becomes to global finance.”
Related: Trump’s World Liberty Financial taps Chainlink as oracle provider
Optimism: Scaling Ethereum for the enterprise era
Optimism, a layer-2 built on Ethereum, envisions the next decade for Ethereum as one of enterprise migration.
“Over the next 10 years, every large enterprise will move onchain, and most will vertically integrate into their own infrastructure on top of Ethereum,” Sam McIngvale, head of product at OP Labs, told Cointelegraph.
With growing regulatory clarity, institutions, payments firms, and fintechs are beginning to build. “Enterprises need strong, secure, yet flexible infrastructure to succeed,” he said.
Coinbase: Builders will drive Ethereum’s future
For Nemil Dalal, head of the developer platform at Coinbase, Ethereum’s long-term success hinges on usability and its builder community.
“Looking ahead another 10 years, I think Ethereum will be the foundation for entirely new use cases… like AI agents transacting on our behalf, richer onchain social communities, and gaming.”
What gives him the most confidence?
“The builders,” he said. “The Ethereum community has always been about showing up, experimenting, and shipping—and that’s what will keep pushing it forward.”
Related: ARK Invest adds $20M in BitMine, trims Coinbase, Block, Robinhood holdings
From experiment to infrastructure
There is a range of visions for what comes next, but a common thread runs through them: Ethereum is evolving from a platform for smart contracts into a foundational layer for real-world assets, enterprise systems, and everyday digital interactions.
If the first decade was about exploring what blockchains could do, the next may be about Ethereum quietly becoming essential to how the world works.
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