As Bitcoin becomes the new darling of global capital with the launch of ETFs, Ethereum's changes are reshaping the infrastructure of the crypto world on a deeper level. Since its inception, Ethereum has been hailed as the "world computer," serving as the starting point for smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). However, with the explosive growth of emerging applications such as DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs, Ethereum itself faces multiple challenges regarding scalability, transaction costs, and user experience. In the past year, a new round of expansion and innovation around Ethereum's ecosystem construction and technological evolution has been unfolding at a visible pace.

The biggest technical bottleneck for Ethereum has always been the scalability of the network—how to enhance processing capacity while maintaining decentralization and security. To this end, Layer 2 is seen as a viable medium- to short-term solution. Whether it’s Rollups, sidechains, or state channels, Layer 2 effectively reduces congestion on the main chain and high Gas fees by offloading computation and storage to outside the main chain and then batching transactions back on-chain.

Recently, the activity of Layer 2 networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base has significantly increased. Multiple mainstream DeFi protocols, games, and NFT projects are actively migrating to Layer 2, leading to substantial improvements in user experience.

For developers, Layer 2 provides a lower-cost testing ground; for users, the reduction in transaction fees and the increase in processing speed help attract more people to shift from centralized exchanges and traditional web interactions to on-chain interactions.

Since Ethereum's upgrade to PoS (Proof of Stake), the staking mechanism has become one of the core pillars of its network security. Recently, the secondary market and innovations surrounding Ethereum staking have also shown a trend of diversification: the popularity of liquid staking protocols like Lido allows users to earn yields while still having liquid assets locked in ETH; some emerging re-staking projects are attempting to further amplify the security utility of staked assets in Layer 2 and cross-chain scenarios.

However, the increasing scale of staking has also sparked discussions about decentralization: as leading staking pools and node operators occupy an increasing share of ETH staking, is the network still sufficiently decentralized? This has become a topic that the community and developers urgently need to balance.

As the most mature public chain for smart contracts, Ethereum has always been the "launch pad" for innovative applications. DeFi once created huge waves in the last bull market, and NFTs nearly paralyzed the Ethereum network at one point. Now, new narratives are brewing.

One of the new narratives is "modular DeFi." Unlike traditional "single-protocol full functionality," modular DeFi emphasizes composability and flexible assembly, providing developers with pluggable financial building blocks and lowering the barriers to innovation.

Another hot topic is the intersection of on-chain gaming and SocialFi, which, leveraging Layer 2 and NFTs, attempts to break the inherent impression that "only finance can be done on-chain," allowing for more diverse application scenarios to take root.

Additionally, Ethereum is gradually increasing its exploration of the intersection of AI and blockchain: through attempts to verify AI model operations on-chain and decentralize training data, it seeks to broaden the boundaries of "trusted computing."

The prosperity of the Ethereum ecosystem also faces increasingly stringent external scrutiny. Compared to Bitcoin, which is more easily accepted by regulators due to its "commodity" attributes, the controversy over Ethereum's "security attributes" has never ceased. If a country or multiple countries' regulatory bodies determine that ETH and some of its applications involve securities issuance, it will bring new compliance challenges to exchanges, staking protocols, and even Layer 2 operators.

At the same time, new public chains and cross-chain protocols are continuously eating into Ethereum's market share. Solana, Avalanche, and Polygon either focus on high performance and low Gas fees or divert users through interoperability with Ethereum. Ethereum must continue to promote underlying performance optimization (such as Danksharding and Proto-Danksharding) to solidify its core position.

For developers and investors, the value of Ethereum lies not only in ETH itself but also in the network effects and innovative capabilities it carries. In the future, as Layer 2 applications scale up, decentralized staking solutions optimize, and new "on-chain narratives" mature, Ethereum may be able to break free from the curse of single-chain congestion and high fees, realizing the true vision of a "world computer."

Of course, this path will not be smooth: how to balance performance, decentralization, and security? How to cope with compliance pressures and competition from new public chains? These remain the "soul-searching questions" that the Ethereum ecosystem needs to answer collectively.

Looking back at Ethereum's development over the past decade, it has become more than just a smart contract platform; it resembles a multi-layered innovative network that can grow and evolve. Whether developers, investors, or ordinary users, everyone is using their funds, computing power, and time to collectively push this "world computer" forward. If Bitcoin's ETF opened the door to traditional finance, then Ethereum is attempting to reshape the world behind that door with more layers and richer application scenarios.

Related: Solana (SOL) price rebounds to $161 after ETF news, but can the upward momentum be sustained?

Original article: “Ethereum (ETH) Ecosystem Expands: From ‘World Computer’ to Multi-Layer Innovation”

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