It’s been a decade since Ethereum’s inception, and although its native ether token has largely struggled for the last half of it, its future looks brighter than ever.

Ether has become more attractive to institutions in recent weeks largely due to legislation around stablecoins – most of which are issued on Ethereum – being signed into the first-ever U.S. crypto law. There’s also the successful June IPO of Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin, new leadership at the Ethereum foundation, and, most recently, a boom in ether treasury firms and corporate entrants.

Until very recently, however, it seemed like ether, better known by its ticker ETH, was left for dead. For one, institutional investors struggled to understand its purpose. While bitcoin’s primary digital gold narrative was clear and digestible, Ethereum’s was more complex, having been likened to a world computer, a web3 app store, digital silver, digital oil, ultrasound money and more.

It’s also suffered from weaker revenue following a big technical upgrade last year and has dealt with increasing competition from Solana, which aims to be the solution to Ethereum’s notorious high costs and slow speeds.

The ether ETFs, now about a year old, were starting to look like zombie funds. They’ve amassed about $9 billion in net inflows since listing, helped largely by the latest resurgence, versus bitcoin ETFS’ $36 billion in their first year of trading. The April sell-off in risk assets made things even worse for the coin.

The price of ETH really took off during the 2021 bull market, when it hit an all-time high near $5,000 – a rally characterized by the rise of decentralized finance, better known as DeFi, and NFTs. But it’s struggled to fully come back since the 2022 crash and hasn’t yet revisited those highs. This week, it’s trading near $4,000 — a psychologically and technically challenging resistance level for ETH investors.

“ETH today is roughly where bitcoin was in January 2019 – that’s when bitcoin turned 10,” said Avichal Garg, a co-founder and general partner at Electric Capital, which has long invested heavily in the Ethereum ecosystem. “It’s not a surprise that after 10 years of uptime, that’s just how long it takes for people to get their heads around this. I suspect the next four to five years is where ETH has its institutional arc, the same way that bitcoin did between 2019 and 2024.”

The last 10 years

The idea for Ethereum was conceived by the computer programmer Vitalik Buterin, an early believer in bitcoin who saw the original cryptocurrency network as valuable, but recognized it was not equipped technologically to handle bigger and more sophisticated applications. The whitepaper, written by Buterin and others to detail the vision and use cases of the cryptocurrency, was released in 2013 and the network launched on July 30, 2015.

Over the years, it has powered crypto trends like DeFi, NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations and tokenization. During the 2021 bull market, it was normal at one point to pay more for transaction fees than the actual NFT or DeFi trade – sometimes more than double.

It initially launched as a protocol similar to the Bitcoin network. But in 2022, it underwent a technical transition called the Merge, which was meant to increase its processing capacity and improve its security in an energy efficient way. It also opened investors up to staking opportunities, which allow them to earn “yield,” or rewards, on their ether holdings.

The next 10 years

Despite the apparent froth in the market – stocks at new records, the return of meme stocks, crypto treasury companies multiplying by the day – the current hype around Ethereum seems to have done a 180 from the last bull run. Instead of meme coins and NFTs, the future is the tokenization of dollars and other traditional assets by the world’s biggest institutions. With a more favorable regulatory environment, they’re embracing crypto technology’s lower costs, faster settlement times, greater transparency about ownership and performance and programmable terms, as well as increased accessibility for retail investors and global reach.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has said he sees the “tokenization of every financial asset” as an important step in “the technological revolution in the financial markets.”

Despite Ethereum’s shortcomings, it still leads its competition in the most important factor.

“The North Star that Ethereum has stuck to from the very beginning was a maximally decentralized network,” said Austin King, co-founder and CEO of Omni Network, a blockchain platform that operates on top of Ethereum. “As stablecoins and institutional interest is starting to grow, we really are seeing the value proposition of that extreme level of decentralization really showing once again.”

“So much of the value that this whole technology class is providing is about removing the need to rely on other parties,” he added. “Solana is an incredible network … but where Ethereum really shines is the decentralization of the network. And if you are managing hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions of dollars of assets, what you care about most is ensuring that you actually really do have a neutral platform that people can operate on.”

Google on Wednesday said it will sign the European Union’s guidelines on artificial intelligence, which Meta previously rebuffed due to concerns they could stifle innovation.

In a blog post, Google said it planned to sign the code in the hope that it would promote European citizens’ access to advanced new AI tools, as they become available.

Google’s endorsement comes after Meta recently said it would refuse to sign the code over concerns that it could constrain European AI innovation.

“Prompt and widespread deployment is important,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs of Google, said in the post, adding that embracing AI could boost Europe’s economy by 1.4 trillion euros ($1.62 trillion) annually by 2034.

The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, published a final iteration of its code of practice for general-purpose AI models, leaving it up to companies to decide if they want to sign.

The guidelines lay out how to meet the requirements of the EU AI Act, a landmark law overseeing the technology, when it comes to transparency, safety, and security.

However, Google also flagged fears over the potential for the guidelines to slow technological advances around AI.

“We remain concerned that the AI Act and Code risk slowing Europe’s development and deployment of AI,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs of Google, said in the post Wednesday.

“In particular, departures from EU copyright law, steps that slow approvals, or requirements that expose trade secrets could chill European model development and deployment, harming Europe’s competitiveness.”

Earlier this month, Meta declined to sign the EU AI code of practice, calling it an overreach that would “stunt” the industry.

“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s global affairs chief, wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time. “This code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”

South Korea-based LG Energy Solution announced Wednesday that it had signed a $4.3 billion contract for supplying batteries to a major corporation, without naming the customer.

The effective date of contract — receipt of orders — began Tuesday and will conclude at the end of July, 2030. During this period, the counterparty will not be disclosed to maintain business confidentiality, the company’s filing with the Korea Exchange showed Wednesday. Reuters reported that Tesla was the counterparty.

Earlier this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the EV maker was behind a previously undisclosed $16.5 billion chip contract with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. 

LG Energy said in its filing that details of the contract such as the deal amount were subject to change and the contract period could be extended by up to seven years. 

“Investors are advised to carefully consider the possibility of changes or termination of the contract when making investment decisions,” the company cautioned. It’s shares were trading 0.26% lower. 

The filing did not clarify whether the lithium iron phosphate batteries would be used in vehicles or energy storage systems. Its major battery customers include American electric-vehicle makers Tesla and General Motors.

The company has been expanding its battery production in the U.S., and is constructing a plant in Arizona that will produce lithium iron phosphate batteries. 

LG Energy Solution and Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.