Vitalik Explores Growth In The Ethereum Network Since 2017, What’s Next In 2020?

The past three years have flown past quickly, as the crypto industry witnessed one of its fastest-growing periods ever. Since hitting all-time highs in price in Dec 2017- Jan 2018, Ethereum has experienced accelerated growth in the community and development of the platform and Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, took to Twitter to look back at some of the progress made in the past year.

Vitalik looks back at the success of Ethereum since 2017

Vitalik listed several projects that have ensured the continued growth of the blockchain since 2017’s Bull Run in a short appreciative tweet. Maker, Uniswap, zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups, and the test nets on the planned proof of stake (PoS) network made the cut. However, Vitalik urged the projects not to lose their stride in development or risk a “catch up” from other projects.

Things Ethereum has in 2020 that it did not in 2017:

* Uniswap
* https://t.co/wwBUgU78ob
* Status
* MakerDAO
* ZK Rollups (eg. Loopring), >2k TPS capacity
* PoS testnets
* Uncle rates < 10% with 10m gas blocks
* Gitcoin grants

Move the goalposts faster, or else we'll catch up!

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 27, 2020

In response to the tweet above, we take a closer look at the accelerated developments made on the largest smart contract platform and the upcoming launches on the network.

Ethereum on its best years since its launch

A number of readers can argue that ETH network’s reached its peak in 2017 during the massive bullish run. Well, given its spike to $1,400 during this period, the argument may hold but the persistent growth on the network since, even during the crypto winter in 2018, it shows Ethereum’s best years were since the unprecedented uptrend.

A. Exponential growth in the Defi space

The value and number of Ethereum-based decentralized finance applications have soared to unbelievable heights since 2017. At its peak, Defi products such as Maker, Synthetix and Uniswap held over $1 billion USD in assets, a magnanimous growth from the $5 USD they held in October 2017. Yes, $5 dollars!

Currently the total value locked in Defi products stands at $624 million USD.

B. ZK-Rollups reach 2000 tps

Another area that is witnessing increased innovation and development is the zero-knowledge rollups, a second layer solution to increase the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain. Over the past three years, ZK-rollups such as Loopring have been able to test over 2000 transactions per second, a huge step from the 7-15 tps Ethereum completes.

C. ERC-20 based stable coins

One of the greatest accomplishments of Ethereum in the past three years has to be stable coins such as Tether (USDT) moving to the chain. Currently, stable coins on the Ethereum blockchain amount to over $4.5 billion – USDT leading the pack with $4.1 billion. The number of stable coins on Ethereum prior to 2017 has also increased from around 10 at the start of 2017 to over 50 as at time of writing.

However, Vitalik bashed the “centralized nature of some of these stable coins stating,

It's an impressive number too though imo some of the centralized stablecoins reflect neither the trust/authority-minimizing decentralization values of ethereum nor traditional values of good centralized governance so I prefer not to emphasize them

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 27, 2020

There exists a multitude of developments since 2017 including oracles, the formation of Gitcoin grants and the switch to the proof-of-stake network (ETH 2.0), which is expected to launch this year.

What next for Ethereum in 2020?

At the start of the year, Vitalik assured the community that the network is stronger than ever, amidst rumbles on the failed launch of ETH 2.0. Ethereum’s switch to PoS is set to be completed this year according to earlier reports signaling a new era for the second largest crypto.

Moreover, several projects are continuing to build on the platform such as a central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform, eThaler, which aims to provide governments with a central bank to consumer gateway for easier and efficient payments.

Share with us upcoming developments on Ethereum in 2020 below.