Blog | LF Decentralized Trust

Staff Corner: Celebrating Ethereum’s 10-Year Anniversary

This summer marks ten years since the Ethereum network launched, forever transforming the blockchain space and introducing the world to smart contracts, decentralized applications, and programmable trust. At LF Decentralized Trust (LFDT), we’re proud to join the global community in celebrating this milestone and spotlighting the critical role our projects and contributors play in Ethereum’s growth and evolution.

From Ethereum Mainnet to regulated financial infrastructure, Ethereum-based systems are driving real-world transformation. LFDT’s Besu client, adjacent projects, and labs serve as the backbone for much of the momentum in the enterprise. As both one of the mainnet execution clients and an enterprise client, Besu delivers parity and critical optionality for institutions and governments to move value effectively across permissioned and public networks. 

The GENIUS and CLARITY Acts in the United States and the SEC chair's declaration that "If it can be tokenized, it will be tokenized" will only accelerate the interest in tokenized money and the demand for the underlying institutional infrastructure that Ethereum is powering.

Collaboration: Ethereum at LFDT

Ethereum and the Linux Foundation’s decentralized efforts have evolved side by side. Both communities are celebrating 10 years in 2025. Over the past decade, we’ve welcomed projects, launched labs, and nurtured developer ecosystems that are central to Ethereum’s ongoing story. In fact, our community has been on the front lines making the case and writing the code that is now driving institutional adoption.

  • In 2019, Hyperledger Besu became the first Ethereum project contributed to a neutral foundation with open governance (then under the Hyperledger brand). Contributed by Consensys, led by Joe Lubin co-founder of Ethereum, and compliant with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) specification, Besu represented the growing interest of enterprises to build both permissioned and public network use cases for their applications. 
  • LFDT now hosts Ethereum-aligned tools like Web3j, Hyperledger FireFly, and Hyperledger Cacti, enabling smart contract orchestration, enterprise interoperability, and cross-chain integrations.
  • One of our newest incubating projects, Smoot, is a modular, reusable, vendor-agnostic interoperability framework for homogeneous and heterogeneous chain-to-chain interactions. It is compliant with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA)’s DLT Interoperability Specification, which provides a standard framework to enable interactions across different blockchains and distributed ledgers.
  • Our newest ledger project, Hiero, which brings Hedera’s open-source core to LFDT, includes Besu as its Ethereum-compatible smart contract engine.
  • Besu is also emerging as a platform for Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) with the development and standards activity underway for Hyperledger Indy on Besu.

 

(Image from LF Decentralized Trust Ethereum Ecosystem Briefing)

Besu: An Ethereum Engine

Today, Besu is a critical part of Ethereum infrastructure:

  • It runs ~16% of Ethereum Mainnet execution clients (source).
  • It's used in L2 rollups like Linea.
  • It’s used in global Central Bank Digital Currencies in countries like Brazil, Singapore, Norway, and more. (For more, read our CBDC ebook.)
  • It was the most frequently cited protocol among 92 financial institutions surveyed by Blockdaemon on tokenization infrastructure (Feb 2024).

From Institutions to Infrastructure: Ethereum-Powered Deployments at LFDT

The Besu community has delivered powerful applications in financial services, payments, and sustainability:

See more examples in our use case tracker.

Tooling for the Ethereum Developer Ecosystem

LFDT hosts projects and labs that extend Ethereum’s reach:

We’ve also seen strong community engagement through meetups, webinars, and Besu workshops.

Looking Ahead

As we mark Ethereum’s 10-year milestone, it’s not just a moment to reflect. As Tomasz Stańczak, EF Co-Executive Director reminds us, it’s a time to look forward. The next decade will demand programmable, privacy-preserving, and openly governed infrastructure capable of underpinning everything from decentralized AI to resilient financial systems. 

At LFDT, we’re building for exactly that future. With Ethereum-aligned technologies like Besu, Hyperledger FireFly, Hyperledger Cacti, and Web3j—all stewarded under neutral, open governance—we’re supporting the builders who aren’t just writing code, but shaping what comes next. Ethereum has always been a project for those who dream big and build boldly. That’s the work we’re here to support.

Celebrate the Builders

None of this would be possible without the contributors, maintainers, and member organizations who continue to work together to build the Ethereum ecosystem. Across the entire Ethereum ecosystem, behind every deployment, benchmark, and protocol upgrade are the people who make it possible. 

In the LFDT community, maintainers like Matthew Whitehead from Kaleido and Sally MacFarlane from Consensys play a central role in evolving Besu into a production-ready, Ethereum-compatible client trusted by enterprises and public networks alike. Contributors like Antonio Mota from Citi are also instrumental in defining enterprise-grade requirements, contributing code and specifications, and actively shaping the Besu Financial Services Working Group.

Their work ensures that Besu remains responsive to real-world needs while staying aligned with Ethereum’s core values of decentralization and openness. Enabling this kind of sustained, community-driven stewardship is what LFDT is here to do.

And there are plenty of opportunities for more people - including you - to get involved! We encourage you to:

Congratulations to the entire global Ethereum community. 🎉 Ethereum’s next decade is being built now—and we’re honored to help shape it with you.

Let’s keep #BuildingBetterTogether.