As Ethereum celebrates its fourth anniversary, what's next?

In January last year, Ethereum hit an all-time high, with the crypto community unanimously agreeing that 2017 was Ethereum's year. However, as of now, Ether has dropped 86% from its all-time high, with the ETH/BTC rate in March 2016 even higher than it is now.

In fact, besides price, Ethereum has been steadily progressing. A report notes that Ethereum has processed over 500 million transactions since its launch, with network utilization remaining fairly stable, averaging below 90% load.

Ethereum has over 70 million unique addresses, with an additional 90,330 addresses added on July 27.

Long-term investor Spencer Noon listed the differences between Ethereum now and in 2016 on Twitter, including $5 billion locked in DeFi protocols, the push for layer-two scaling solutions, financial institutions gearing up for futures, and a mature community, among others.

The difference between $ETH now vs. March 2016:

1. ~$500m locked in DeFi
2. Legit ETH 2.0 progress
3. Resolved identity crisis (PSoV)
4. Institutional adoption coming (e.g. futures)
5. Quiet UX improvements for dapps
6. L2 progress
7. Community maturation

The future is bright. https://t.co/Qo4AFrXesr

— spencer.lens (@spencernoon) July 22, 2019

While Ethereum's transition seems to be repeatedly delayed, the development ecosystem remains robust, with the most core protocol developers, followed by Bitcoin and Cardano.

In January 2019, there were an average of 240 active developers, a 23% increase, which is 8 times that of Bitcoin and 20 times that of XRP.

Regarding decentralized applications, 29 of the top 50 Dapps are built on Ethereum.

Among the top 50 Dapps in various categories, 42 financial-related Dapps are based on Ethereum, including MakerDAO and Compound, with 44 exchanges built on Ethereum, including Kyber and Uniswap.

Enterprise Adoption
In terms of enterprise adoption, according to the blockchain development survey by GoodFirms, Ethereum blockchain is the top choice for 92.3% of developers.

Technology consulting firm Gartner acknowledges active exploration of blockchain by enterprises. Their research report shows that by 2030, blockchain will add $1.76 trillion in value to enterprises, with a total business value of $3.1 trillion.

Stablecoins Driving Demand for Ethereum
Nearly all major stablecoins like Dai, USDT, USDC, PAX, and TUSD are ERC-20 tokens, requiring GAS fees for each transaction GAS.

Crypto trading firm TradeBlock found in their report that Ethereum transaction fees have significantly increased over time, aligning with the surge in stablecoin transaction volume since January 2018, indirectly boosting actual demand for Ethereum.

The report also compares stablecoin on-chain transaction volumes with Venmo, a mobile payment service under PayPal, showing that stablecoin on-chain transaction volumes have surpassed Venmo, transferring over $37 billion with just $827,000 in GAS fees, compared to Venmo's service fees totaling $150 million.

While Ethereum's network is thriving, its price performance has been lackluster. Ethereum is still down over 85% from its all-time high, with most attributing this to the 2017 ICO bubble.

A report from crypto asset research firm Delphi Digital also points out that many projects continue to sell Ethereum into the market each month for operational funds or liquidity.

Perhaps Ethereum's 2.0 transition will be a significant positive turnaround. Earlier this year, the Ethereum network underwent the Constantinople upgrade, seen as a phase of the 2.0 update and preparation for the transition from POW to POS mechanism.