Ethereum went live 10 years ago, bringing programmability and composability to a technological innovation sparked by the advent of Bitcoin in 2009.
But what does the future of Ethereum hold? It’s a loaded question that is incredibly difficult to answer given the complexity and decentralized nature of the world’s pioneering smart-contract blockchain protocol.
Cointelegraph recently traveled to EthCC in Cannes to speak to the brightest minds in the Ethereum community about its current state and the future of the protocol amid the rise of highly competitive next-generation layer-1 blockchains.
These conversations formed the backbone of Cointelegraph’s latest mini-documentary: “The Fight for Ethereum’s Soul.”
The documentary features several founders, CEOs and builders in the Ethereum ecosystem including Ethereum Foundation (EF) co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Ethereum France president Jerome de Tychey, Figment co-founder and CEO Lorien Gabel, Dune Analytics co-founder and CEO Fredrik Haga, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, YAP Global co-founder and CEO Samantha Yap and Base head of product Tom Vieira.
The documentary was directed and produced by Cointelegraph’s head of multimedia Gareth Jenkinson, with senior producer Celine Tan.
A decade of dominance under threat
Ethereum has dramatically evolved over the past decade. The blockchain managed to execute a change in consensus algorithm, often likened to replacing the engine of a car driving at full speed on a highway.
The shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake fundamentally changed the way the protocol works. Ethereum parted ways with Bitcoin’s proof-of-work approach to consensus, rooted in computationally and energy-intensive hashing, to a skin-in-the-game system that requires validators to stake ETH tokens to maintain the network and reap rewards.
While Ethereum initially provided fantastic functionality, it eventually encountered the same problems as the preeminent cryptocurrency protocol. Its base layer chain simply could not serve the needs of the growing number of users, applications and services that set up on its network.
To enable the ability to process infinitely scalable transactions, the Ethereum community adopted a layer 2-centric approach to scaling. Execution, from transactions or asset creation, was shifted to a separate infrastructure layer. These layers use…
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