Yesterday, Ethereum turned ten years old. When the genesis block went live in 2015, it was just an "experimental project," but now it manages over $44 billion in Layer 2 locked value and is one of the infrastructures supporting global cryptocurrency ETFs. The first decade of Ethereum has written the most dramatic evolutionary history in blockchain, from the DAO fork to the merge upgrade, from high Gas fees to the promotion of Rollups, with each crisis becoming a stepping stone for technological leaps.

However, at the beginning of its second decade, Ethereum's "coming-of-age ceremony" is not easy. After the implementation of account abstraction, security vulnerabilities emerged, and the Layer 2 ecosystem is experiencing a "factional war." MEV erodes fairness, and global regulation is a "double-edged sword." These four core challenges hang over Ethereum like the sword of Damocles. Institutional funds are flooding in through ETFs, while ordinary users are hoping for a better interaction experience. Ethereum must find a new balance between technological ideals and real-world compromises.

Account Abstraction: The "Life-and-Death Game" of Convenience and Security

In May 2025, a user shared his experience on social media: after clicking authorization, his wallet balance was emptied within 15 minutes, and the other party didn't even obtain his private key. While using a certain wallet's "one-click upgrade account abstraction" feature, he accidentally authorized a malicious contract, and ETH worth 120,000 yuan was automatically transferred. This situation is not an isolated case; blockchain security company SlowMist reported that within just two weeks of the Pectra upgrade, over 100,000 wallets were stolen due to the EIP-7702 authorization vulnerability, with total losses reaching $150 million.

The Dual Nature of EIP-7702

The Pectra upgrade, launched on May 7, 2025, achieved a significant breakthrough in "account abstraction" through EIP-7702, allowing ordinary user wallets (EOA) to temporarily possess smart contract functionality to support batch transactions, Gas fee payments, social recovery, and other "Web3 native experiences." Theoretically, the "user experience stubbornness" that Ethereum has not solved for ten years could be addressed. Previously, completing a DeFi exchange required two authorizations and one transaction, but now it can be merged into a single operation. Moreover, developers can pay Gas fees on behalf of users, making "playing Web3 with zero ETH" a reality.

Behind the convenience, the trust model has been completely restructured. The CertiK security team pointed out that EIP-7702 breaks the underlying assumption that "EOA cannot execute contract code," putting old contracts that rely on tx.origin==msg.sender at risk of reentrancy attacks. More seriously, hackers exploit users' curiosity about "account abstraction," using phishing links to lure users into authorizing malicious contracts. For instance, the top-ranked EIP-7702 delegated contract (0x930fcc37d6042c79211ee18a02857cb1fd7f0d0b) was found to automatically redirect funds, with novice users encountering account abstraction making up 73% of the victims.

Future Challenges

The Ethereum Foundation is promoting "smart account security standards," requiring wallets to display the open-source status of delegated contracts and implement a 72-hour cooling-off period. However, the real challenge is balancing "flexibility" and "security." Institutional users need complex permission management, such as multi-signatures combined with time locks, while ordinary users want simplicity akin to using Alipay. Vitalik mentioned at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival that account abstraction is not the end but a continuous game between "user sovereignty" and "security barriers."

Layer 2 Ecosystem: The "Factional Crisis" Behind Prosperity

Transferring USDC on Arbitrum costs just $0.01, while on the mainnet it costs $5. Developer Zhang Ming from Beijing complained that it took him 30 minutes to cross-chain assets when buying an NFT on zkSync, highlighting the current state of Layer 2: by 2025, the total locked value of Ethereum Layer 2 could exceed $52 billion, with daily transaction volumes reaching 40 million, yet users still have to switch between different Rollups as if they are in multiple parallel universes.

Optimistic Hegemony & ZK Counterattack

Currently, the Layer 2 ecosystem is polarized. Arbitrum (TVL of $17.8 billion) and Optimism (TVL of $8.9 billion) in the Optimistic Rollup have become the developers' top choices due to EVM compatibility, capturing 72% of the market share. On the ZK-Rollup side, zkSync (TVL of $3.8 billion) and Starknet (TVL of $2.2 billion) are rapidly catching up, with zero-knowledge proof technology compressing transaction confirmation times to 2 seconds and reducing fees by 60% compared to Optimistic Rollups.

However, beneath the prosperity lies hidden concerns:

• Liquidity fragmentation: Uniswap's liquidity on Arbitrum is 8 times that of zkSync, and users can only recharge repeatedly during transactions.
• Technical fragmentation: Optimistic Rollup relies on "fraud proofs," which requires a 7-day withdrawal period, while the proof generation cost of ZK-Rollup remains a barrier for ordinary developers.
• Centralization risks: Arbitrum's sequencer (transaction sorter) is controlled by OffchainLabs, which once caused a 3-hour transaction interruption due to server failure.

The Dream of "Superchain" and Real-World Resistance

Optimism's proposed "Superchain" plan aims to connect all Optimistic Rollups through a shared security layer, but progress has been slow. By July 2025, only Base and Zora had completed cross-chain interoperability, while zkSync and Starknet jointly launched the "ZK Alliance" to achieve proof recognition. However, compatibility among different ZK algorithms remains a challenge. Blockchain analyst Wang Feng has stated that whether Layer 2 ultimately resembles "a seamless network" or "multiple fragmented territories" will determine whether Ethereum can support a billion users.

MEV: The Fairness Dilemma in the "Dark Forest" of Blockchain

On March 24, 2025, Uniswap user Michael attempted to exchange $220,000 worth of USDC but fell victim to a typical "sandwich attack." MEV bots first bought USDT, driving up the price, and immediately sold after Michael's transaction, resulting in Michael receiving only 5,272 USDT and losing $215,000. On-chain data shows that validator bobTheBuilder earned a $200,000 "tip" for packaging this transaction, while the attacker profited only $8,000, making ordinary users the biggest losers.

The Industrialization of MEV and Network Fairness

After Ethereum transitioned to PoS, MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) shifted from "miner privilege" to a specialized industry. Arbitrage scripts are written by seekers, and builders are responsible for packaging transactions, while optimal blocks are chosen by validators. In the first quarter of 2025, the total MEV extraction on Ethereum reached $520 million, with DEX arbitrage and liquidations accounting for 73%. Ordinary users pay an "implicit tax" of 15%-20% in their transaction costs for this.

The situation is further complicated by "MEV centralization": 65% of block building rights are controlled by leading builders Flashbots, and validators often choose high MEV blocks for higher returns, making it difficult for smaller builders to survive. MIT professor Muriel Médard has warned that if block sorting rights are monopolized by a few institutions, Ethereum could become "a high-frequency trading playground for Wall Street."

Path to Resolution: From Technical Defense to Mechanism Design

The Ethereum community is advancing several solutions:

• Encrypted memory pools: Hiding transactions outside the public memory pool to prevent MEV bots from monitoring them in advance.
• MEV-Burn: Destroying a portion of MEV profits to reduce validators' rent-seeking incentives.

In the proposer-builder separation (PBS) model, only validators propose blocks while builders compete for sorting rights, thereby reducing the risk of single-point control. However, it is still necessary to balance "fairness" and "efficiency" among these solutions. Ethereum core developer Dankrad Feist has stated, "MEV is not a vulnerability; it is an inevitable result of blockchain transparency—our goal is not to eliminate MEV but to distribute the profits more fairly across the entire network."

Regulation and Financialization: The "Soul-Searching" After Institutional Entry

In July 2025, the Ethereum ETF approved by the SEC in the United States saw a net inflow of $2.2 billion, and institutional holdings of ETH surged from 5% to 18%. Meanwhile, the EU's "Smart Contract Transparency Act" requires Rollups to disclose trading algorithms, and Hong Kong mandates all crypto service providers to implement KYC, leading Ethereum to face the ultimate conflict between "compliance" and "decentralization."

The "Three Forks" of Global Regulation

• United States: The "CLARITY Act" will usher in a wave of DeFi compliance, defining ETH as a "commodity" to allow bank custody, while DeFi platforms must also register as "exchanges."
• European Union: The MiCA regulation requires stablecoin issuers to hold 100% fiat reserves, and privacy coin transactions require additional approval.
• China: Although the mainland remains under high pressure, the cross-border settlement of the digital yuan is expected to exceed 3.5 trillion yuan by 2025. Hong Kong, as a "testing ground," has already opened up free circulation and trading of digital assets, and the stablecoin bill has invigorated the market.

The regulatory differences have also given rise to a series of "regulatory arbitrage": for example, a leading DeFi protocol deployed a KYC module in the EU while retaining anonymous pools in Singapore, making compliant trading the only option accessible to U.S. users. This "fragmented compliance" not only increases costs for developers but also undermines Ethereum's vision of a "global unified infrastructure."

The Double-Edged Sword of Financialization

The influx of institutional funds has increased liquidity, but the correlation between Ethereum's price and U.S. stocks has risen from 0.3 to 0.6. In June 2025, when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.5%, ETH experienced a single-day drop of 8%, while Bitcoin only dropped 5%, a scenario unimaginable five years ago. Moreover, there are deeper implications: the "value capture mechanism" has changed. Previously, ETH's price was driven by on-chain Gas fees and ecosystem growth; now, ETF fund flows and macro interest rates have become the dominant factors.

Xiao Feng, Chairman of Wanxiang Blockchain, pointed out that Ethereum's second decade must find direction between "innovating within a compliance framework" and "upholding the original intention of decentralization." Hong Kong may be the best testing ground, as it can connect with mainland China's digital yuan while attracting global crypto enterprises.

Finding Balance in the "Impossible Triangle"

In Ethereum's first decade, upgrades like "the Merge," "Shapella," and "Dencun" answered the question of "can it survive?" In its second decade, it must answer "how to become a true global infrastructure." The four major challenges of account abstraction's security game, Layer 2's ecosystem integration, MEV's fair distribution, and regulatory compliance adaptation essentially continue the "impossible triangle" of "decentralization, security, and scalability." This time, the trust of a billion users is at stake.

In his ten-year anniversary speech, Vitalik stated, "We don't need a perfect blockchain; we just need an 'evolving blockchain.'" Perhaps Ethereum's ultimate value lies not in solving all problems but in proving that a decentralized network can still move forward amid the tug-of-war between technological ideals and real-world compromises.

The curtain on the second decade has been raised, and the answers will be written in every line of code, every upgrade, and every user's wallet!

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