Ethereum Hasn’t Gone Down in 10 Years—Here’s What That Really Means
Staff Writer • 2025-08-22
Ethereum just pulled off something few tech platforms ever do: 10 years of 100% uptime. No outages. No hard resets. Not even a hiccup during a $200 billion market swing or the biggest upgrade in crypto history. So how did Ethereum stay online through chaos, controversy, and the collapse of its own energy model? We spoke to Preston Van Loon, one of the core devs behind Ethereum’s infrastructure, and co-founder of Prysmatic Labs—the team that helped pull off the historic shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. “We Swapped the Engine Mid-Flight” Van Loon compares Ethereum’s 2022 Merge to replacing a jet engine mid-flight. And he’s not exaggerating. “We were flying a jumbo jet, and we went out onto the wing to swap engines while still in the air.” Ethereum didn’t stop to upgrade. Instead, developers ran a parallel blockchain (Beacon Chain) for 18 months, stacked real capital on it, then fused it live with the main chain—without downtime. Behind the Curtain: The Work Nobody Sees While headlines chased NFTs and gas fees, Preston’s team was in the trenches making sure Ethereum’s infrastructure didn’t crumble under its own weight. “It’s not sexy work,” he says. “But it’s what keeps the lights on.” His team built Prysm—one of the most popular Ethereum consensus clients—focusing on disk efficiency, data pruning, and reducing memory bloat to keep nodes running. From Hacker Utopia to Institutional Backbone Ethereum started with cypherpunk dreams: decentralization, censorship resistance, unstoppable code. Now? It’s being used to settle billions in stablecoins, underpin experiments in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and attract interest from BlackRock, PayPal, and Visa. “Ethereum isn’t selling out,” Preston says. “It’s being validated.” The Next Mission: Make It Invisible Preston’s vision is for Ethereum to be as normal as cash—but better. “I want to tap my phone at the grocery store and pay with Ethereum. That’s the dream.” But to do that, Ethereum needs to scale. Fast. Upcoming changes include: Slot times halving from 12 seconds to 6 Parallel transaction execution Blob data scaling for layer 2s It’s not just about gas fees—it’s about UX. Want to Help? Show Up Forget job titles. Ethereum core devs aren’t gods behind curtains. They’re open-source nerds who want feedback. “Join ETH R&D. Ask dumb questions. Write EIPs. The door’s open.”
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