To commemorate Ethereum's 10th anniversary, BeInCrypto will be taking a comprehensive look back at the 10 most significant contributions of this revolutionary blockchain to the crypto industry. These contributions include smart contracts, ERC-20, the EVM, and other important standards, Layer-2 protocols, DAO governance, and how they have influenced DeFi, ICOs, NFTs, meme coins, ETFs, and more. Ethereum has done so much for us. Ten Years of Ethereum: Since Vitalik Buterin first launched Ethereum a decade ago, smart contracts have been a key feature of the blockchain. Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, allowed for smart contracts, but Satoshi Nakamoto focused primarily on its trustless and decentralized structure. Ethereum, on the other hand, introduced Solidity, a programming language specifically tailored for smart contracts. Ten years later, it's difficult to quantify the impact of Ethereum's smart contracts. They remain one of blockchain's most powerful features, and other protocols have significantly enriched the field. While we don't know how many ETH smart contracts currently exist, the explosive growth in unique addresses suggests a clearer picture. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) Standard further fueled the rise of smart contracts. The EVM governs how these protocols work, processing transactions, monitoring the global Ethereum ecosystem, and more. This standard helps power Ethereum for users around the world, opening up new possibilities for decentralized finance. Ethereum has revolutionized token minting and blockchain usage. The ERC-20 Standard is another significant contribution of Ethereum over the past decade. Before ERC-20, creating tokens on a blockchain was a highly fragmented and inconsistent process. By standardizing new rules between tokens, Ethereum has pioneered a way to make over a million assets unified, fungible, and interoperable. Thanks to ERC-20, Ethereum is the blockchain of choice for Tether to mint USDT tokens. This is particularly impressive given that USDT is the world's most popular stablecoin. Academic papers have attempted to quantify the impact of this standard on the crypto industry, but its impact is undoubtedly positive. Furthermore, Ethereum's ability to host Layer-2 protocols has revolutionized the industry over the past decade. These protocols can build solutions to many problems within the framework of classic blockchains, particularly scalability. Today, even Bitcoin boasts a range of Layer 2 protocols, but Ethereum was the first to focus on them. A particular benefit of ERC-20 was the ICO boom of the late 2010s. With this new standard, protocols like ChainLink and Basic Attention Token used it to launch their LINK and BAT tokens, respectively. Today, some of these protocols have surpassed Ethereum in developer activity, highlighting their relevance over the past decade. Between these technical improvements, its vibrant community, and its ability to host decentralized exchanges, Ethereum is arguably the birthplace of DeFi. Its tools and infrastructure have enabled the community to develop trustless economic infrastructure in practice. Its DAO governance model further enables unprecedented financial democratization. In an exclusive commentary with BeInCrypto, Hart Lambur, co-founder of Risk Labs, shared his thoughts on Ethereum's impact on DeFi: The total value locked in the Ethereum blockchain has skyrocketed over the past decade: NFTs, memes, ETFs, and more. These factors have combined to make Ethereum the undisputed home of NFTs, something completely unprecedented a decade ago. By combining self-executing smart contracts, a DeFi-oriented community, and several new token standards, ETH was at the heart of the 2021 NFT boom. The continued relevance of these products today further demonstrates Ethereum's influence. While Dogecoin was the first meme coin, launched over a decade ago, it was Ethereum's Shiba Inu that ignited the industry. While the two coins are superficially similar, Ethereum's DeFi infrastructure and community have created a significant wave. Ethereum developers didn't directly create meme coins, but their work has been instrumental in shaping the meme-infused industry we know and love today. Finally, Ethereum holds a significant second place in another key area. Bitcoin had the first approved spot ETF in the United States, but ETH followed a few months later. This approval signals that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under the leadership of Gary Gensler, will allow other altcoin products, and a wave of positive applications is currently sweeping in. Furthermore, ETH ETFs are currently outpacing BTC ETFs. All in all, Ethereum has done a lot for the cryptocurrency world over the past decade. It has proven to be a radical departure from Bitcoin, with a host of features that make a new world possible. Ethereum has influenced every aspect of the crypto community.Given its current rate of adoption, blockchain’s contribution to the cryptoeconomy is likely to remain crucial for years or decades to come.