10 Years of MyEtherWallet: Evolving with Ethereum
This summer, the crypto community is celebrating 10 years since the launch of the Ethereum blockchain on July 30, 2015. The smart contract technology that made Ethereum so different from Bitcoin completely transformed the entire crypto space and made the incredible progress of the last ten years possible.
Crypto is notorious for being a financial and technological ‘wild west’, with high volatility, crazy hype cycles, and tokens that turn from moon missions to rug pulls in the blink of an eye. That’s been changing recently, but still, for any project to survive in crypto beyond a few years is very rare. For 10 years? Almost unheard of. There are only a handful of companies that have been working in the Ethereum ecosystem continuously for 10 years straight, and MyEtherWallet is one of them.
[MEW brand image, peggy or the astronaut or something]
Beginnings (2015)
In 2015, the crypto community was tiny. Beyond some computer scientists, cryptographers, gamers, and tech enthusiasts, very few knew about Bitcoin. Even fewer were mining it in their apartments, like MEW founder Kosala Hemachandra. When Vitalik Buterin published his vision for a new, more powerful blockchain, it was a revelation for those who understood the technology like Kosala did.
Anyone who learned about Ethereum and had some BTC to spend was in the unique position to buy into the Ethereum ICO, but not all members of this community were prepared to use the command line to interact directly with the blockchain. Interest in the ETH pre-sale grew quickly, but the technical knowledge required was a high barrier to entry.
Kosala saw that there was a need for a simple tool for wallet creation. Just a couple of weeks after Ethereum’s launch, on August 11, 2015, he created an ‘Ether Wallet Generator’ and posted about it on Reddit. This web page could be used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain without setting up a full Ethereum client. If not for MEW, the number of people who were able to buy the initial ETH launch would have been much lower.
The main motivation for what would eventually become MyEtherWallet was making blockchain interaction easier and safer for every user, regardless of technical expertise. From the very first day, Kosala was determined to keep the software open-sourced and to give users absolute, full control over their wallet. User privacy, security, and self-custody remain the core values of MEW to this day.
Listening to the community (2016-2018)
The ETH ICO sale was the spark for the creation of MEW, but the overwhelming ICO boom that followed in 2016-2018 was the fire in which the MEW wallet of today was forged. During that time, numerous improvements were made to the original web platform based on direct user feedback.
When there were specific token releases or claims that the community was interested in, MEW worked to create dedicated workflows for the purpose. In a fledgling space where very little education or support was available, MEW became a source of information not only on the use of an Ethereum wallet, but on crucial security tips and how crypto worked in general.
It was MEW’s commitment to user security that drove the development of the browser extension MEW CX, released in February of 2016, and the addition of hardware wallet support to the web platform – Ledger Nano S in November 2016, and Trezor in February 2017. By summer 2017, users could connect to MEW with browser wallets. The first Knowledge Base – an invaluable resource for newbies coming into the space – was published in the fall of 2017.
All of this meant that through the ICO boom, MEW was the only place where users of any Ethereum wallet could hold any ERC20 token, and get help with doing so, significantly accelerating the pace of the token sales that would shape the explosive DeFi growth of the next few years.
But what if you wanted to participate in ICOs and DeFi, but didn’t have any crypto to start with? In July 2018, MEW established its first onboarding integration with Simplex – a partnership that continues to this day. Simplex, another true crypto OG founded in 2014, offered a way for users to buy ETH quickly and securely right from their MEW dashboard, and then use it to swap for other tokens. Users were coming to expect much more from crypto wallets than just receiving and holding tokens, and MEW was responding to the challenge.
New solutions for new users: MEW 5, MEW mobile, and block explorer (2018-2020)
The ICO bubble had to burst eventually, but it transformed the crypto landscape in its wake. Hundreds of thousands of new users flooded into the space, many of them very unfamiliar with blockchains, wallets, and keys. These people were much more used to traditional banking where transactions could be frozen if you made a mistake and account access restored if you lost your password.
Scams proliferated, taking advantage of confused newbies. Attacks on crypto platforms became more sophisticated, in some cases rerouting whole swaths of internet traffic just to get at specific websites like MEW. Protecting the users’ keys (both from scammers and from the users themselves) became more important than ever.
In addition to updating hosting services and stepping up security protocols, MEW was working on a new interface – friendly, clear, and with much more UI guidance to make sure users were following best security practices. This would be the first major interface change since MEW was launched in 2015.
MEW 5 web version was released in February 2019. It would feature popular decentralized applications like the ENS manager (MEW being one of the first wallets to have this integration), as well as DeFi superstars MakerDAO and Aave. Users didn’t have to connect their wallet to each dapp separately and figure out multiple different interfaces. They could come to MEW and explore the emerging world of DeFi directly in a platform they trusted. MEW 5 also came with an updated version of browser extension MEW CX – more secure, user friendly, and with unlimited access to decentralized applications and DeFi.
At the same time, MEW recognized that more and more users were relying on their phones to manage their finances, including crypto. The first MEW mobile app, MEWconnect, was released in the summer of 2018 for iOS and in the fall for Android. This was a signer app that added a layer of security to using the MEW web platform without having to purchase a hardware wallet. Now, a user could be confident that a transaction would not be sent from their wallet unless they confirmed it on their phone.
The signer app was just the start. An update was already in the works that would allow mobile users not just to hold and send crypto from their phone, but to buy and swap directly in the wallet, without sacrificing any of the self-custody, privacy, and transparency that had become the trademarks of MEW. The full-fledged MEW wallet app was released in March 2020, and MEW web added support for the WalletConnect protocol so that MEW mobile users could take advantage of the web’s extensive features by connecting via QR code.
While MEW was building wallet interfaces with newbies in mind, there was another essential tool that users needed every day, but often found confusing – the block explorer. MEW support was directing users to block explorers daily: to check status of their transactions, to verify wallet balances, and to review wallet history. While all of these features were available in wallet, block explorers remained a valuable source of ultimate blockchain truth.
The MEW team felt that the block explorer could be more tailored for the less technical user, while maintaining commitment to open-source software. The Ethereum block explorer ethVM was first released in September 2020, and would eventually come to be the default data provider for all MEW wallets.
With a beautiful updated web interface, a full-featured mobile app, and a brand new Ethereum block explorer, MEW proudly celebrated 5 years of building on Ethereum on August 11, 2020. Considering how many crypto companies that got started in 2015 had disappeared by that time (spoiler alert: 99%), five years was already quite a feat, and MEW was ready to take on whatever came next.
Evolving with Ethereum: ETH staking, DeFi, Layer 2s, and MEW 6 (2020 - 2021)
The biggest thing that came next was ETH 2.0 and the Beacon Chain. Ethereum was undergoing the most dramatic transition imaginable for a blockchain: a change to the consensus mechanism from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. In addition to considerable improvements for Ethereum’s performance, this also meant that a new DeFi product would become available to users – staking.
The ETH staking contract launched on October 14, 2020 and the Beacon Chain was successfully initiated on December 1, 2020. MEW was ready: ETH validator staking became available in MEW web on December 8th and on MEW mobile by December 21st. Running an Ethereum validator independently, ‘from scratch’, was too difficult for most people, and it still is. MEW web’s support for all mobile, browser, and popular hardware wallets enabled users of almost any Ethereum-compatible wallet to stake ETH without relinquishing self-custody.
In addition to introducing staking options, MEW wallets were rising to the expectations of the evolving user base with expanded access to DeFi protocols. The mobile dapp browser, launched in February 2021 for Android and June 2021 for iOS, opened the full world of decentralized applications for MEW mobile users. Liquid staking with Lido was added in mobile in the fall of 2021, making staking available to users with any amount of ETH.
Ethereum was getting better about scaling and transaction fees, but interacting with swaps, dapps, and NFTs could still get expensive. The alternative sidechains and Layer 2 networks that offered faster speeds and lower fees were starting to get traction with users. In July 2021, MEW mobile became a multichain wallet with the addition of the most popular Ethereum sidechains Polygon and Binance’s BNB chain (then known as BSC).
That July was also when MEW web’s next iteration was released, just in time for MEW’s 6th anniversary. MEW 6 completely rebuilt the portfolio dashboard, making swaps, dapps, and NFT management more intuitive than ever, while retaining the legacy features valued by expert users, like direct contract interaction. While MEW web always allowed users to interact on multiple EVM chains beyond Ethereum, this version also added support for Polygon and Binance chain. But MEW had something new and exciting in the works – a wallet built to be massively multichain from the ground up.
Multichain and new communities: Enkrypt, ETH Denver, Shapella, and MEW Universe (2022-2024)
The MEW CX extension, originally released in 2016 and fully updated in 2019, was a great, secure tool for interacting with everything that Ethereum had to offer. However, the space was rapidly expanding with Layer 2 networks, and new chains were launching every day. The multichain scaling future of Ethereum was coming to life, and MEW built a wallet for the support of that future, on EVM and beyond.
MEW’s new multichain browser wallet Enkrypt was launched on August 3, 2022, first on Chrome, and then on every major browser (even Safari!) over the next few months. Initially launching with support for Ethereum, Polygon, Binance chain and the Polkadot ecosystem, Enkrypt was adding integrated support for new chains weekly, quickly growing to nearly 100 natively supported networks.
This was a completely different approach than browser wallets had taken before. Many allowed users to add a custom EVM network, but this meant finding the network’s parameters (what are those, even?), adding the information to the extension, and hoping that it would work with wallet settings which were technically made for Ethereum.
Enkrypt works closely with networks and user communities to make sure that the wallet performs as intended with every chain. Popular dapps are prominently featured to encourage new users to try them and any usability issues are addressed quickly through efficient communication with network and dapp teams. The multichain future promises to make crypto faster, cheaper, and easier, but that can only happen if using dozens of networks at the same time is secure and seamless for experts and newbies alike.
Meanwhile, MEW mobile had some exciting news of its own. It would become the official wallet for one of the most popular conferences in the Ethereum ecosystem – ETH Denver 2023. At the conference, all attendees would receive free tokens to use for meals purchased at participating food trucks. This meant they could get a taste of using crypto even if they had never done so before.
For this event, the MEW team built out a full custom experience in the wallet that allowed conference goers to get set up in just a few clicks. Seeing thousands of users, newbies and pros alike, purchase real things with crypto – in seconds, without having to worry about the complications of buying crypto or paying for transaction fees – was illuminating. The MEW team returned from Denver with inspiration to continue making better, easier wallets every day.
Adding more options for onboarding was essential to make it simpler for curious newbies to get started. Crypto was getting to be in the mainstream news cycle more and more, with DeFi Summer of 2020 and the NFT hype of 2021. Many more people were entering the space and they needed convenient ways to buy crypto wherever they were. Simplex had been integrated in MEW since 2018 and continued to be a reliable partner, but providers can have geographic limitations and users have their own personal preferences.
Over the next few years, MEW expanded onboarding options considerably. MoonPay was added in March 2022, Coinbase Pay in November 2023 (with MEW being one of the first self-custody wallets to support this integration), and Topper by Uphold in July 2024.
While the team at MEW was working hard on serious security and usability improvements, they weren’t forgetting that at the end of the day, crypto could use a dose of light-hearted fun. The MEW mascot, a cute little astronaut called Peggy, was inspired by Margaret Hamilton – the NASA scientist who worked on software for the Apollo program. In July 2023, MEW mobile started a MEW Universe reward program built around Peggy NFTs, available free to MEW users for collecting daily Energy points.
MEW Energy turned out to be really popular. Despite all the difficulties and challenges of crypto, it was possible to have the best of both worlds: a secure, easy-to-use product that also gives you a daily boost of entertainment without promising 10000x returns. In the past two years, there have been 10 seasons of Peggy NFTs, with the 10th season coinciding with MEW’s 10th anniversary!
Beyond EVM and the crypto sandbox: Solana, BTC, TradFi fusion, and the future
When Enkrypt was released in 2022, it was a multichain wallet from day one. It didn’t just support EVM-compatible chains, but an entirely separate Polkadot ecosystem, and over the next three years, besides dozens of EVM networks, it added support for SKALE, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin and Solana (including a dedicated SOL staking dapp). In fact, Enkrypt is the only self-custody browser wallet that has EVM, BTC, Polkadot substrate AND Solana support.
MEW mobile, a wallet that originally followed MEW web’s Ethereum-first legacy, added Bitcoin support in June 2025. Now, MEW mobile users have access to the top ‘blue-chip’ cryptocurrencies BTC and ETH, as well as all the top Layer 2s (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, and BNB chain) along with swaps and bridging between those networks right in the wallet. With all these chains, you could almost say that calling ourselves ‘MyEtherWallet’ is now a misnomer, but you don’t get to have a 10-year old name in this space for nothing, and we are sticking to it!
So much has changed in crypto in the past decade. MEW gained a great deal of experience watching its user community evolve from OGs who bought the ETH ICO sale to newbies who are downloading their first wallets in 2025. MEW has supported beginners at every stage without abandoning the needs of legacy expert users. After all, MEW traced the evolution of the crypto wallet itself – from a simple address generator that could display balances, to the personal finance ‘everything app’ that the self-custody crypto wallet is becoming now.
And yet, some things never changed at MEW. There was plenty of temptation to follow the lead of other projects in the space: to sacrifice user privacy for marketing leverage, to sacrifice self-custody for convenience, to sacrifice open-source software and team independence in favor of a more lucrative model. Despite this, MEW stayed true to the original convictions of its founder and of crypto itself: to give simple, secure access to the blockchain, available to anyone, regardless of their level of expertise, geographic location, or access to traditional banking.
During the past year, crypto in the United States has taken one of the wildest rides of its life. After years of uncertainty and confusion due to regulatory pressure, recent changes in the executive and legislative bodies of the US government have opened the doors to unprecedented crypto growth and innovation. Stablecoins and RWA (real world asset) tokenization are bringing DeFi and TradFi closer than they’ve ever been, and removing barriers to entry for users from all over the globe. That means wallets will have to build out features and create unique solutions with new assets and new users in mind. Over the past 10 years, MEW has done this time and again. We are ready. Let’s go.