Vitalik Buterin, the 23-year-old founder of Ethereum, has been working on his platform since 2013, and there’s no sign of him slowing down yet. In fact, he has recently predicted that in ten years time, we’ll see thousands of new applications running on Ethereum every day – and this includes everything from finance to identity systems, insurance services to gambling apps, social networks to cloud storage solutions. So, how will all of this work? And how do people think he can actually pull it off?
1) There will be many applications based on ether
The reason ethereum was created in 2016 is to take blockchain technology and try it out on a truly useful application. A lot of people think there is only one way to use blockchain, but that’s not true. There are many different ways to use it and find value in it. It doesn’t have to be all about digital currency or money—or even financial services at all! It can be used by individuals or businesses as a platform on which they can build any kind of application. Think about an app store or online marketplace like Amazon but built on top of a decentralized network where no company controls how applications run, how data is kept secure, or who has access.
2) People will pay in Ether to use dApps
Many new platforms are emerging with a decentralized business model, and it is difficult to know what factors will make them successful. However, one thing seems certain: If a platform gains a large enough user base and establishes itself as an integral part of users’ daily lives, then it could survive in its own right, even if developers don’t get any direct revenue from hosting apps. In fact, it’s possible that apps would even pay hosts in Ether to run on their networks. Remember how Google and Facebook survived through ads? It might be exactly that same situation here – except people might actually prefer paying to host ads rather than having to deal with invasive tracking cookies. This could allow Ether value to increase substantially from just those two predictions alone!
3) The price of Ether will be high
Ether is often discussed in conjunction with Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies. However, because it’s not based on proof-of-work like Bitcoin, its price is always changing. As of March 2018, Ether’s price is approximately $1,250 per token, with a market cap of more than $50 billion. That puts it behind only Bitcoin and Ripple. In fact, at time of writing (March 29), Ether has already broken $2 billion in 24-hour trading volume—a feat that took Bitcoin over 11 years to achieve in August 2017! This makes it a highly valuable digital asset to watch going forward. By ethereum prediction 2025, we expect Ethereum’s value to be higher than ever before.
4) Decentralized Exchanges will explode in popularity
It’s already happening. Decentralized exchanges like EtherDelta, IDEX, and OasisDEX are on fire right now. Anyone can trade on these platforms, and they only take a tiny fee of each transaction. The need to go through multiple parties to exchange digital currency is a thing of the past; you can do it all in one place if you want! Obviously, there’s no way to know how popular decentralized exchanges will be in 2025; but if history is any indication, we can expect them to explode in popularity over the next decade. All told, we should see many people switch from centralized exchanges over time as decentralized solutions become more stable.
5) Ether will help run these Decentralized Apps
Another prediction is that these decentralized apps (DApps) will help change or completely overhaul industries and sectors, ranging from finance to entertainment. The blockchain’s ability to keep data secure and tamper-proof makes it an attractive way to create systems of voting, currency exchange, communication and a variety of other services without needing a centralized intermediary. While some speculate about how much power miners will have on different blockchain networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum’s transparent mining process means there will never be any doubt about how nodes are acting on each other’s behalf. In all three cases (i.e., Bitcoin Cash forks, hard forks with replay protection, and consensus forks), nodes running both old software and new software should accept transactions and blocks sent to them by nodes running both versions.
