On July 30, 2025, we celebrate a decade since Ethereum was launched on Mainnet. Inside, one of the greatest milestones in the short life of this Industry.
When it was launched as the world’s first smart contract platform, this was obviously something new and a whole new way of thinking about software. Instead of renting access to someone else’s platform that could change the rules or unlock you at any time, you could – in theory – now participate in systems that belonged to everyone and no one where the rules were written in code and could not be arbitrarily changed by the whims of a CEO. Users would own their date and software would be maintained and managed by a network rather than a boardroom. The consequences seemed pretty utopian.
Nearly ten years from Ethereum’s launch and dreams of a web3 version of Amazon, eBay, Facebook or Tiktok, however, have not arrived and has nowhere on the horizon.
Gavin Wood, Ethereum co-founder and his vision of “Web3” imagined exactly that. Joe Lubin, the famous founder of Consensys, said that “Ethereum will have the same pervasive influence on our communication and our entire information infrastructure.”
Libertarian journalist Jim Epstein predicted a year after Ethereum’s launch that “the same types of services offered by companies such as Facebook, Google, Ebay and Amazon will instead be delivered by computers distributed across the globe.”
Vitalik butterin imagined herself Ethereum “Law, Cloud Storage, Prediction Markets, Trading Decentralized Hosting, [hosting] Your own currency, “In his 2014 Bitcoin Miami speech, where he announced Ethereum to the world.” Maybe even Skynet, “The fictional artificial neural network from Terminator Films. He has described the platform he created as both a threat and an opportunity for platforms like Facebook and Twitter back in 2021.
The shell problem
The barrier to achieve this vision is scale. The most successful consumer applications today serve hundreds of millions of users. Instagram processes more than 1 billion photo uploads daily. Ebay handles approx. $ 17 billion in transactions every quarter. Facebook’s Messaging platforms process trillions of messages annually.
Ethereum processes approx. 14 Transactions per Second and Solana can handle over 1000. Instagram handles over 1 billion photo uploads daily. Ebay is processing $ 17 billion in transactions quarterly. The math does not work.
Let’s entertain the decentralized eBay example for a moment. A truly decentralized eBay would require far more than simple payments. Each listing or update requires onchain transactions for product meta data, pricing and condition details. Auctions need automatic buddy solution with time -lined smart contracts. Escrow systems will have to bear funds until delivery confirmation with DAO duke of disputes.
User reputation systems require unchangeable assessment of rating tied to drawing addresses. Inventory Management would need real -time inventory, possibly through tokenized goods. Shipment confirmations would require Oracle integration to the certificate of delivery. Market fees and tax royalties need smart contract enforcement. Optional identity verification systems require decentralized credentials. Each interaction will multiply the transaction load exponentially beyond what the current infrastructure could support.
It goes without saying that this would require a blockchain with an unprecedented speed and flow. Frankly, a decade after Ethereum, the infrastructure just hasn’t been there to support it.
The economy does not work
The business model has not always made sense either. Modern applications need a massive scale to generate revenue that covers development costs. In addition, fragment users of LAG 2 solutions across platforms where (for example) Violence users cannot directly interact with polygon applications. This defeats the purpose of building overall global computing.
This is not theoretical. OpenSea struggled with profitability despite dominating NFT trading with high-value transactions and fee-tolerant users. If you can’t take advantage of selling digital art to crypto enthusiasts who pay hundreds in fees, how do you build a marketplace for used goods? The economy is even worse for lower value transactions that define mainstream trade. A decentralized social network that charges $ 5 per Posts would be dead on arrival.
Gaming applications that require a few dollars in transaction fees for each commercial trade do not attract players who expect the same free elsewhere. So far, the only viable on-chain companies have been the ones that can extract massive value of relatively few users-in the essential financial applications with high efforts and speculative trade.
Calvary is coming
The industry accepted a false trade -off: security and decentralization or functionality and scale, but not both. But transaction flow has steadily increased (and will continue with) across networks as technology matures. We can now achieve a massive scale, even with proof of work chains, maintaining safety and decentralization that did blockchain -revolutionary in the first place (rather than the premature embrace of evidence of rod that compromised these principles).
Zero knowledge certificate allows users to prove transaction validity locally, and submit only small cryptographic evidence that has been recursively and parallel to a network of supply. Networking can process millions of transactions without each knot that verifies each individual individually. When users prove their own transactions, the marginal costs of adding a further transaction method can zero and blockchains can finally support the economy required by mainstream applications.
But ten years later, it is clear that the vision that was once laid by the futurists on Web3 has moved at a disappointing pace. Let’s hope that the next decade will move a little faster – and the fingers crossed – our blockchains too.
