CANNES — A decade ago, a group of young idealists gathered in a chilly Berlin loft with peeling walls, mismatched furniture, and a bold vision. Among them was Vitalik Buterin, the then-teenaged founder of Ethereum, who, along with a few developers, was working to launch a revolutionary new blockchain platform.

On that day in July 2015, the group unveiled “Frontier,” Ethereum’s first live network — stripped down, rugged, and barebones. It had no sleek interface or onboarding guides, but it offered something no one else had: a live environment where developers could build decentralized apps (dApps) and deploy smart contracts.

That humble beginning planted the seed for what would become the world’s most used programmable blockchain.

A Decentralized Beginning

A year before Ethereum’s public launch, a then-unknown Vitalik Buterin visited IBM’s Zurich lab. Security mistook him for a child wandering the office. When contacted, Paul Brody, a blockchain executive at IBM, laughed it off.

“That’s not a child,” he told them. “That’s Vitalik. He just looks really young.”

This small anecdote underscores Ethereum’s early days: misunderstood, underestimated, but quietly on the brink of changing the global financial system.

Ethereum’s Impact Today

Ten years later, Ethereum has gone from a bold idea to a financial backbone for Wall Street, tech startups, and global enterprises.

• Over $400 billion in assets are secured on Ethereum
• It powers the majority of DeFi platforms, NFT marketplaces, and blockchain gaming ecosystems
• Companies like JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Visa now experiment or build on Ethereum
• Major upgrades like The Merge and layer-2 solutions continue to push its scalability and sustainability

Key Takeaways on Ethereum’s 10th Anniversary

• Ethereum launched in July 2015 as a basic but functional network named Frontier
• Its purpose: create a decentralized financial system driven by smart contracts
• Co-founded by Vitalik Buterin, it evolved into the world’s most popular blockchain for apps and finance
• Ethereum is now an invisible infrastructure behind Wall Street, global banking, and Web3 innovation