Ethereum Turns 10: Here’s How Its Booms & Busts Shaped History

Authored by Yohan Yun via CoinTelegraph.com,

Ethereum celebrated its 10-year anniversary on Wednesday, with renewed institutional momentum fueling hopes that Ether could challenge its all-time high that was set in November 2021.

Over the past decade, Ethereum has become the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchain, with nearly $85 billion in total value locked (TVL) at the time of writing.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, circulated an early version of the white paper in 2013. The project raised $18.3 million in its initial coin offering (ICO) and officially launched in 2015 as a blockchain for smart contracts. Its cryptocurrency, Ether, now ranks as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin.

Here’s a look back into Ethereum’s first decade, featuring the ICO boom, DeFi summer and the rise and fall of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Ethereum’s history has been full of crazes, such as ICOs, NFTs and airdrops.

2015-2016: The birth of Ethereum and The DAO hack

In April 2016, The DAO launched as a decentralized venture capital project designed to let tokenholders vote on how the entity invests its funds. But it didn’t last long — it suffered an exploit worth around $60 million in June 2016. 

Throughout the decade, several Ethereum-based projects fell victim to cyberattacks. But this one is remembered as a critical bifurcation in Ethereum’s history, as developers and the community made a controversial decision to hard fork the blockchain and reverse the network to the moment before the theft.

This led to a permanent chain split. The new chain that came out of the fork continued with Ethereum’s brand and majority support. A smaller group remained on the original blockchain, which is now known as Ethereum Classic.

Ethereum Classic did not enjoy Ethereum’s success after the chain split. Source: CoinGecko

2017-2018: Ethereum explodes with the ICO boom

Ethereum was the go-to platform for ICOs, thanks to the rise of the ERC-20 token standard, which made it possible to launch token projects without the need to develop a new blockchain. Some projects were genuine. They used Ethereum’s ICO as a launchpad to migrate to their own networks (though plenty of them were useless.)

Ether surged from under $10 at the start of 2017 to a then-all-time high of about $1,450 by January 2018. Bitcoin also reached a new ceiling above $19,000 during the ICO craze.

Ethereum’s surge during the ICO boom. Source: CoinGecko

The speculation wasn’t limited to ICOs. Ethereum also hosted CryptoKitties, a viral NFT game where players collect and breed cartoon cats. Its success in late 2017 clogged the Ethereum network.

The Ethereum gas fee spike during CryptoKitties’ rise foreshadowed future scalability issues. Source: Etherscan

In early 2018, regulators began to crack down on unregistered securities offerings. Throughout the year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed lawsuits and issued subpoenas to hunt down many ICOs accused of violating securities laws.

Most ICO-funded projects failed to deliver, and prices collapsed. By December 2018, ETH had fallen to around $85.

2019-2020: DeFi Summer scorches Ethereum

Ether spent much of 2019 hovering between $100 and $300, a period now remembered as the first crypto winter. Developers focused on infrastructure, while projects such as MakerDAO, Compound and Uniswap built the foundation for a new kind of financial system based on smart contracts instead of banks.

Ethereum’s DeFi TVL topped $1 billion for the first time during DeFi summer. Source: DefiLlama

By mid-2020, Ethereum had transformed from a post-ICO wasteland into the base layer of DeFi. Compound launched its governance token, COMP, and kicked off a yield farming frenzy that rewarded users for locking assets in DeFi protocols. Ethereum’s network usage spiked, gas fees soared and ETH followed suit, climbing to over $750 by the end of the year.

2021: Ethereum meets superstars through NFTs

Ethereum’s next breakout came through art and memes. In 2021, NFTs captured the cultural zeitgeist as projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club turned pixelated avatars into mainstream status symbols. In March 2021, digital artist Beeple sold an NFT artwork for $69 million at Christie’s.

OpenSea, the leading NFT marketplace at the time, saw a surge in trading volume and briefly became one of the highest-earning decentralized apps (DApps) on Ethereum. Celebrities, brands and influencers piled in, with Ethereum taking center stage in pop culture.

NBA star Stephen Curry joins BAYC. Source: CryptoStorm

ETH reached an all-time high of $4,891 in November. But the flood of activity exposed Ethereum’s limits. Gas fees became unaffordable for casual users and turned transactions into luxury events.

2022: Ethereum merges as crypto crashes

The year 2022 was brutal for crypto as a whole, not just Ethereum. A cascading series of collapses — starting with Terra’s failed algorithmic stablecoin and culminating in the FTX implosion — wiped out billions in crypto. ETH dropped from around $3,800 in January to around $1,000 in June, dragged down by marketwide panic and liquidity crises.

Amid the wreckage, Ethereum pulled off one of the most anticipated upgrades in blockchain history. On Sept. 15, 2022, it successfully completed the Merge, transitioning from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Ethereum completes key upgrade as the crypto market descends into chaos. Source: Vitalik Buterin

2023: Ethereum rollups, recovery and the return of airdrops

With PoS live, developers turned their attention to layer-2 (L2) solutions that process transactions offchain while relying on Ethereum for security. Arbitrum, Optimism and zkSync emerged as early leaders in this new frontier.

The new projects also brought in a new wave of airdrop speculation. Inspired by Uniswap’s 2020 giveaway, users began farming activity across emerging protocols in hopes of qualifying for future token drops. In March 2023, Arbitrum’s long-awaited airdrop went live, distributing Arbitrum tokens to early users and reigniting excitement across the ecosystem. Optimism also had its second and third airdrops later that year.

Meanwhile, liquid staking tokens such as Lido, Rocket Pool and Coinbase’s cbETH became the dominant method to stake ETH, as they allowed users to earn yield while maintaining liquidity.

Liquid staking accounted for over a third of Ethereum’s staking by July 2023. Source: Binance

By contrast, DeFi and NFT activity had cooled from their 2021 highs. ETH’s price started the year at around $1,200 and climbed to around $2,300 by the end of the year.

2024: Ethereum fragmentation and ETF momentum

L2s exploded in 2024 as liquidity scattered across the Ethereum ecosystem. The growth of chains like Base, Mantle, Blast, zkSync and others led to the creation of siloed environments. Each L2 hosted its own decentralized exchanges and liquidity pools, which meant assets like ETH and USDC were no longer easily interchangeable across networks.

The Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4844 upgrade, implemented in March 2024, reduced costs and accelerated the shift to rollups. Activity surged, but bridging between L2s remained clunky and inefficient. Users chasing airdrops and incentives moved from chain to chain, which deepened the fragmentation.

Value in rollups peaks at over $50 billion in December 2024. Source: L2Beat

Ethereum managed to scale transaction throughput, but this came at the cost of unified liquidity, increased arbitrage complexity and reduced composability across the broader DeFi landscape.

At the same time, institutional interest in Ethereum began to rise again, driven by the approval and launch of Ethereum-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US.

2025: Ethereum regroups at the base layer

After years of offloading activity to L2s, the Ethereum Foundation called for a strategic shift back to the base layer. 

At the same time, Ethereum’s appeal to institutions continued to surge. Spot ETH ETFs gained traction in the US. By midyear, ETH ETF inflows had outpaced Bitcoin ETFs. ETF issuers began exploring staking the underlying ETH.

Ethereum ETFs enjoy a streak of net inflows in July. 

Meanwhile, public companies began to follow Strategy’s (formerly MicroStrategy) Bitcoin playbook with Ether. 

Ether fell to as low as under $1,500 in April 2025, as the Ethereum Foundation battled leadership shuffles. The renewed institutional interest has raised Ether back to around $3,800 at the time of writing.