Ethereum became live 10 years ago, bringing programmability and composability to an innovative technology provoked by Bitcoin’s arrival in 2009.
But what does Ethereum’s future hold? This is a loaded question that is incredibly difficult to answer provided by the complexity and decentralized nature of the worldwide pioneer blockchain protocol.
Cointelegraph recently traveled to the ETHCC to Cannes to communicate with the bright thoughts in the Ethereum community about the current state and the future of protocol amid the rise of the highly competitive next-generation Layer-1 blockchain blockchains.
These conversations formed the backbone of Cointelegraph’s latest mini-documentary: “The battle for Ethereum’s soul.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20zFedQDKL8
Documentary features several founders, CEOs and builders at the Ethereum Ecosystem including the Ethereum Foundation (EF) co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Ethereum France President Jerome de Tychey, Co-Founder and CEO Lorien Gabel, Dune AnalyTics, Co-founder and CEO Frediken Haga, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, Yap Global Co-founder and CEO Samantha Yap and product base head Tom Vieira.
The documentary was directed and made by cointelegraph multimedia leader Gareth Jenkinson, along with senior producer Celine Tan.
A decade of dominance under the threat
The Ethereum has noted it has changed in the past decade. The blockchain has managed to conduct a change in the consensus algorithm, which is often compared to replacing a car driving a full -speed car on a highway.
Moving from proof-of-work to proof-the-stake initiative has changed in the process of protocol. The Ethereum separated ways along with the proof-of-work approach of Bitcoin in consensus, which is rooted in computationally and energy-intensive hashing, in a skin-to-game system that requires validators to stake ETH tokens to maintain the network and reap rewards.
While the Ethereum initially provided amazing -amazing operating, it eventually encountered the same problems as the preeminent cryptocurrency protocol. Its base layer chain cannot provide the needs of the increasing number of users, applications and services setting up on its network.
To enable the ability to process endlessly measured transactions, the Ethereum community adopted a 2-centric scaler strategy. The implementation, from the transactions or creation of the asset, was moved to a separate layer of infrastructure. These layers use incredible advances in cryptography, such as ZK-Proofs, to submit unbelievable evidence of transactions and activities to the base layer of Ethereum.
Related: Ethereum turns 10: Here’s how the history of Booms and Busts it shaped
It brought a scale, speed and reduction of layer 1 cost, but an inevitable consequence is the destruction of liquidity and transfer of incentives for validators. The fees drop to the base layer, which remains a major incentive for Ethereum validators to maintain the network.
Meanwhile, the better environmental implementation of the 2S layer began to pull the liquidity from the base layer of the Ethereum. In 2024, the grumblings of disappointment began.
Known voices calling for the EF to intervene and suggest protocol changes that ensure the amount of ETH continues to rise while maintaining progress in UX and UI provided by Layer 2S.
Changing guard
In 2025, the EF made significant changes in its organization structure. Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang took a two-way paper at the top of the foundation, reporting on a braintrust led by Vitalik Blerin.
Pectra, the latest upgrade of the Ethereum network, hit Mainnet in May. This is the most significant change in protocol since the combination of 2022.
Combining the Prague and Electra Consensus Layer Hard Forks layer, Pectra introduced 11 Ethereum Improvement Profosals (EIPs) to improve scalability, user experience and staking efficiency.
PECTRA is building improvements made by the upgrade of 2024 Dencun, which has popularly introduced Blobs through EIP 4844, known as Proto-Danchating.
Blobs have provided a new way for the L2S to post transaction data to L1. The effect is dramatic; L2 transaction fees dropped by 90%.
Related: Ethereum transaction volumes View year-high amidst staking drama
One inevitable consequence of this upgrade is that the L2S no longer pays a large fee to live in Ethereum. According to Dune co-founder Fredrik Haga, this is a technological boon, but an economic discenter for L1 validators.
“The L2 situation is interesting because now 85% of the transactions are in L2, so only 15% are left in Ethereum L1, but 85% of the volume is still living in L1,” Haga said. “The L1 has a limited relationship, if you do, as it is fully numbered. But the big money is still clear to L1. Then it is clear that the L2 pays a lot to live in L1. And since the blobs were introduced in March 2024, which actually went to zero.”
The combined impact of Dencun in 2024 and Pectra in 2025 helped the Ethereum ecosystem even move to an elaborate roadmap. Stańczak said the unity of liquidity, interoperability and improvement of the overall user experience has been a top priority for the Ethereum Foundation (EF) over the last 18 months.
“I think the big focus is now in the interop, to tooling and standards, and speeding up that idea that all the chains around Ethereum should feel like a single ecosystem, and it should be natural for users to move between them to use all applications that flow only in different chains if they need,” Stańczak said.
“There are clear challenges in showing how the fee structure, the availability of data and interop mechanics all work together. A few years ago, it’s really hard to guess how L2 is going to evolve. Now we see that we have a lot of clarity.”
Jerome de Tychey, the leader of Ethhereum France and ETHCC organizer, added that the future protocol’s success is a balancing action between the prioritization of L1 mechanics and the symbol with L2S.
“We’re doing two things right now. First, we put some emphasis on L1, in the scalability and the L2’s maintenance. We have a lot of consideration about the future performance of the security aspects of things, and also the potential token itself, of course, but also upgrading how the user experience will be worse in the next few years. De Tychey said.
However, the act of balancing remains a certain. How does the Ethereum L1 ensure that validators have been incentive to maintain network running and avoid entering an arm performance with new-age layers such as Solana, SUI and Aptos?
Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron has offered a thought, suggesting that any efforts to try to compete directly with Solana, SUI or Aptos may be damaging to Ethereum’s future.
“I’m a bit optimistic about it in the sense that they seem to be saying, like, OK, maybe we focus on having data and implementing more than personally I want, but without really giving up the benefit we have from a perspective on regulating,” Bairon said.
“I think it’s dangerous, isn’t it? If they go down to this road trying to compete with the implementation, the possibility is that they will end up coming out of people trying to do the exact same thing.”
In the next decade
While the volume of criticism was deaf to the last year, the ETHCC talks gave a sense of optimization about the future of Ethereum.
This optimism is not rooted in enthusiastic but instead of utility and onchain metrics. More than 90% of tokenized real-world assets are built in Ethereum.
Blackrock, the largest manager of the world’s owner, is the motivation of Ethereum security.
Robinhood took the heads of the Cannes with the launch of its own layer based on Ethereum 2, squarely aimed at RWA and security tokenizations.
“If you think about DeFI compared to Trans, I would say that there is no chance that Defi will not dominate all the global markets. It will be there. It will take place in Ethereum,” Stańczak said.
De Tychey said there was no significant alternative. “Everything else is a ghost train and going in the wrong direction, and pushing and lobbying so that can still exist with many different interests, many interests.”
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal summarizes things seriously:
“Ethereum dragged the implementation game. Whereas the main value of the Ethereum proposal is the highly decentralized, sovereignty-resistant, unauthorized settlement layer. And if the Ethereum performs well with its strengths and focuses on the best layer of negotiation, we already have enough network effects and the momentum for the whole world Ethereum. “
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