Block 0: The “World Computer” Is Born
On 30 July 2015, at 15:26 UTC, Ethereum’s Genesis block was mined.
That “Frontier” moment delivered a prophecy: the World Computer.
Vitalik and the founding cohort claimed they were not polishing Bitcoin, but building a planet-scale operating system for any decentralized application.

Ten Years Later: The Reckoning
Today, Ethereum turns ten.
The World Computer never became a universal app platform.
It evolved—reluctantly or wisely—into a financial-settlement layer.
DeFi protocols gulp most gas; trillions of dollars settle here daily.
Gaming, social, storage? Gone quiet or migrated.
Was this compromise or evolution?
Tracing Ethereum’s shifting narratives is the story of how tech-idealism finds footing in messy reality.

Phase 1: The Golden Age of Idealism (2015-2017)
Winter 2013. Nineteen-year-old Vitalik, backpacking Israel, wonders:
What if a blockchain could run any program?
The leap from single-purpose cash to general-purpose computation felt revolutionary.
Early adopters were techno-utopians who believed code is law.
They sought a stateless, trustless digital polis—governed by contracts, not courts.
Every design choice—Turing-complete VM, gas metering, account model—screamed maximize decentralization and generality.

The DAO: Idealism at Scale
30 April 2016. The DAO launches—a code-only hedge fund.
28 days, 11.5 M ETH (14 % of supply), > $150 M.
17 June, re-entrancy drains 3.6 M ETH.
Community splits:

• “Code is Law—the exploit is valid.”

• “Intent over Code—hard-fork to restore.”
  Fork wins → Ethereum Classic (ETC) keeps the old chain.
  The episode reveals the central paradox:
  Pure decentralization may produce intolerable outcomes; human intervention erodes the very principle.

Phase 2: ICO Casino—Lost in Bubbleland (2017-2020)
Summer 2017. ICO mania: $6 B in 2017, $12 B in H1 2018.
Ethereum becomes the planet’s token-printing press.
Vision: World Computer.
Market answer: “We only need ERC-20.”
Path dependency kicks in—90 % of activity = tokenomics.
Developers optimize for minting, not computing.
2018 bear market: price and narrative both collapse.
Ethereum must answer:
If not the World Computer, what are you?
Answer, forged in recession: a financial-settlement layer first, universal computer second.
Eth 2.0 specs quietly re-focus on finality, cheap fees, security for finance.

Phase 3: DeFi Summer—Finance as Destiny (2020-2021)
Compound’s liquidity mining ignites DeFi Summer.
DeFi is no longer one use-case; it is the use-case.
Each trade, liquidation, derivative proves the thesis:
Finance is the most valuable computation.
Ethereum discovers Product-Market Fit.
But success chokes the network—$100 gas for a swap.
Survival beats purity:

• Rollups move from “nice-to-have” to “must-ship now.”

• Eth 2.0 roadmap re-ordered to serve DeFi first.
  Narrative cemented: World Financial Computer ≈ World Computer.

Phase 4: L2 Ascendancy—Sovereignty Leased, Host Parasitized (2021-2023)
Success becomes existential threat: DeFi’s triumph prices out retail.
Monolithic architecture—execution, consensus, storage, DA all on L1—hits a wall.
Vitalik pens the pivot:

“Ethereum’s future is modular.”
From one chain to rule them all to multi-layer symbiosis.
Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync absorb activity.
New question: If most txs live on L2, what is L1?
2022 DA wars: Celestia et al. propose specialized data layers.
Community coins “Ethereum alignment” to balance openness & control.
Success re-defined:
Not “everything happens on Ethereum,” but
“everything eventually anchors to Ethereum’s security.”
Ethereum evolves from landlord to bedrock.

Epilogue: The Shape-Shifter Settles
A decade of narratives:
World Computer → ICO Machine → Financial Spine → Modular Bedrock.
Each shift was less a betrayal than an adaptation to survive the next constraint.
Ethereum’s story, then, is not one of ideals abandoned, but of ideals iterated until they fit reality tight enough to hold the weight of trillions.

Block 0: The “World Computer” Is Born
On 30 July 2015, at 15:26 UTC, Ethereum’s Genesis block was mined.
That “Frontier” moment delivered a prophecy: the World Computer.
Vitalik and the founding cohort claimed they were not polishing Bitcoin, but building a planet-scale operating system for any decentralized application.

Ten Years Later: The Reckoning
Today, Ethereum turns ten.
The World Computer never became a universal app platform.
It evolved—reluctantly or wisely—into a financial-settlement layer.
DeFi protocols gulp most gas; trillions of dollars settle here daily.
Gaming, social, storage? Gone quiet or migrated.
Was this compromise or evolution?
Tracing Ethereum’s shifting narratives is the story of how tech-idealism finds footing in messy reality.

Phase 1: The Golden Age of Idealism (2015-2017)
Winter 2013. Nineteen-year-old Vitalik, backpacking Israel, wonders:
What if a blockchain could run any program?
The leap from single-purpose cash to general-purpose computation felt revolutionary.
Early adopters were techno-utopians who believed code is law.
They sought a stateless, trustless digital polis—governed by contracts, not courts.
Every design choice—Turing-complete VM, gas metering, account model—screamed maximize decentralization and generality.

The DAO: Idealism at Scale
30 April 2016. The DAO launches—a code-only hedge fund.
28 days, 11.5 M ETH (14 % of supply), > $150 M.
17 June, re-entrancy drains 3.6 M ETH.
Community splits:

• “Code is Law—the exploit is valid.”

• “Intent over Code—hard-fork to restore.”
  Fork wins → Ethereum Classic (ETC) keeps the old chain.
  The episode reveals the central paradox:
  Pure decentralization may produce intolerable outcomes; human intervention erodes the very principle.

Phase 2: ICO Casino—Lost in Bubbleland (2017-2020)
Summer 2017. ICO mania: $6 B in 2017, $12 B in H1 2018.
Ethereum becomes the planet’s token-printing press.
Vision: World Computer.
Market answer: “We only need ERC-20.”
Path dependency kicks in—90 % of activity = tokenomics.
Developers optimize for minting, not computing.
2018 bear market: price and narrative both collapse.
Ethereum must answer:
If not the World Computer, what are you?
Answer, forged in recession: a financial-settlement layer first, universal computer second.
Eth 2.0 specs quietly re-focus on finality, cheap fees, security for finance.

Phase 3: DeFi Summer—Finance as Destiny (2020-2021)
Compound’s liquidity mining ignites DeFi Summer.
DeFi is no longer one use-case; it is the use-case.
Each trade, liquidation, derivative proves the thesis:
Finance is the most valuable computation.
Ethereum discovers Product-Market Fit.
But success chokes the network—$100 gas for a swap.
Survival beats purity:

• Rollups move from “nice-to-have” to “must-ship now.”

• Eth 2.0 roadmap re-ordered to serve DeFi first.
  Narrative cemented: World Financial Computer ≈ World Computer.

Phase 4: L2 Ascendancy—Sovereignty Leased, Host Parasitized (2021-2023)
Success becomes existential threat: DeFi’s triumph prices out retail.
Monolithic architecture—execution, consensus, storage, DA all on L1—hits a wall.
Vitalik pens the pivot:

“Ethereum’s future is modular.”
From one chain to rule them all to multi-layer symbiosis.
Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync absorb activity.
New question: If most txs live on L2, what is L1?
2022 DA wars: Celestia et al. propose specialized data layers.
Community coins “Ethereum alignment” to balance openness & control.
Success re-defined:
Not “everything happens on Ethereum,” but
“everything eventually anchors to Ethereum’s security.”
Ethereum evolves from landlord to bedrock.

Epilogue: The Shape-Shifter Settles
A decade of narratives:
World Computer → ICO Machine → Financial Spine → Modular Bedrock.
Each shift was less a betrayal than an adaptation to survive the next constraint.
Ethereum’s story, then, is not one of ideals abandoned, but of ideals iterated until they fit reality tight enough to hold the weight of trillions.