Ethereum (ETH): What is it?
Ethereum ETH by Crypto Nation – July 12, 2021
By Crypto Nation – July 12, 2021
Ethereum crypto card summary:
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Ethereum Fundamental Data
- Name: Ethereum
- Symbol: ETH
- Type: Blockchain
- Consensus: Proof Of Work (PoW), migration underway to Proof Of Stake (PoS)
- Year of creation: 2013 study, 2014 funding, 2015 launch
- Founders: 8 co-founders, the best known being Vitalik Buterin
- Official website: https://ethereum.org
- Mainnet: Yes – https://etherscan.io/
- Whitepaper: https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/
- Code: https://github.com/ethereum
- Twitter: @ethereum
Ethereum market data
Below are the basic market informations regarding this cryptocurrency:
- Price: It is expressed in dollars ($). There is also its percentage change (%) over the last 24 hours.
- Rank: Ranking of this cryptocurrency among all those referenced on CoinMarketCap. This is done according to the market cap.
- Market cap: Market capitalization represents the total dollar ($) value of all coins in circulation.
- Volume: It represents the total dollar ($) amount of the cryptocurrency in question traded over the last 24 hours.
What is the goal of the Ethereum project?
Ethereum is a platform running on its own open source blockchain, allowing anyone to develop decentralized applications (DApps) and build decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) on it, all in a secure manner.
This platform makes it possible to run a large number of applications, thus avoiding the need for programmers to create their own dedicated server, all thanks to the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
You can also execute Smart Contracts, in order to automate tasks or actions carried out on the blockchain. This makes it possible to avoid the manual execution of these and thus eliminates the need for a trusted third party. This ensures the security of the network.
The project aims to become a global platform for decentralized applications, thus enabling these software to resist censorship, downtime and fraud.
On paper, we have to differentiate two things:
- Ethereum, the name of the platform.
- Ether (ETH) Ξ, the name of the native unit of account traded on the platform.
These are two very different things, but the use of “Ethereum” to refer to the cryptocurrency is very common.
A large number of cryptocurrency projects are being built on the ETH network, in particular projects related to decentralized finance (DeFi). It is also the most used blockchain platform.
These cryptocurrencies are called “tokens”, in connection with the use of the ERC-20 compatibility standard.
Over 280,000 ERC-20 tokens have been launched, around 40 of them are in the ranking of the 100 largest capitalized cryptocurrencies, such as USDT, LINK or BNB.
Ethereum is currently secured by an algorithm proof of work (Proof of Work – PoW) named Ethash. But it is planned to update the network to an algorithm proof of stake (Proof of Stake – PoS) when the long-awaited update called Ethereum 2.0 will be launched. The tests started in 2021. It is a thick, complex subject that we will not go into details here.
The origin of the project
Ethereum is made up of eight co-founders, who first met in Zug, Switzerland, on June 7, 2014.
The most known of the gang is the Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin, who in 2013 published the white paper presenting the Ethereum network.
The second most important co-founder of ETH is arguably the Englishman Gavin Wood. He coded the early technical elements of Ethereum in C++, proposed the native programming language of Ethereum, namely Solidity, and was the first technical director of the Ethereum Foundation.
Subsequently, he created the Web3 Foundation and is currently at the head of the Polkadot project.
Other names on the long list of co-founders are:
- Anthony Di Iorio
- Charles Hoskinson
- Mihai alisie
- Joseph lubin
- Jeffrey Wilcke
- Amir Chetrit
In order to finance the development of the project, they organized an online public fundraising during the summer of 2014, thus putting the first Ethers (ETH) up for sale.
60 million tokens were sold, making it possible to collect no less than 31,591 Bitcoins (BTC) worth, at the time, around 21 million dollars.
All this makes it possible to officially launch the Ethereum blockchain on July 30, 2015.
For information, here are all the protocol updates made:
| Code Name | Release Fate | Release Block |
|---|---|---|
| Frontier | July 30, 2015 | 0 |
| Ice Age | September 8, 2015 | 200,000 |
| Homestead | March 15, 2016 | 1,150,000 |
| DAO Fork | July 20, 2016 | 1,920,000 |
| Tangerine Whistle | October 18, 2016 | 2,463,000 |
| Spurious dragon | 23 November 2016 | 2,675,000 |
| Byzantium | October 16, 2017 | 4,370,000 |
| Constantinople | February 28, 2019 | 7,280,000 |
| Petersburg | February 28, 2019 | 7,280,000 |
| Istanbul | December 8, 2019 | 9,069,000 |
| Muir Glacier | January 1, 2020 | 9,200,000 |
| Berlin | April 15, 2021 | 12,244,000 |
| London | 5 August 2021 | 12,965,000 |
What is its use?
ETHs are used above all to remunerate the validators of the blocks which ensure the validity and security of the chain.
They also act as “gas”, thus making it possible to pay the costs of using the blockchain during transactions, or any other interaction with services and applications present on the network.
Instead of just keeping your Ethers in a corner, know that you can make them grow.
You can, for example, save them on the YouHodler platform, which offers an annual rate of 5.5% on this cryptoasset. Our guide dedicated to this platform is available by clicking here.
Otherwise, you can participate in staking for ETH 2.0, on Binance for example, the rate is 5%.
Management of the economy (as of 11/06/2021)
Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum is not a deflationary system, the number of ETH is unlimited. Currently, around 5 million ETH are produced per year.
On August 5, 2021, during the London update, the EIP-1559 was introduced. This modification of the protocol makes it possible to have a “burn” system, by destroying the costs generated by transactions on Ethereum.
This mechanism helps offset inflation due to the unlimited supply of ETH.
There are nearly 120 million ETH in circulation.
Also bear in mind that the smallest unit of ETH is named Gwei (gigaweis).
1 Gwei = 0.000000001 ETH.
The genesis block, the very first in the Ethereum blockchain, issued 72 million ETH. Of these 72 million, 60 million were shared between the contributors to the 2014 fundraising and 12 million were paid to development funds.
The remaining amount was issued in the form of rewards to the miners in the network.
Diagram of the evolution of the cryptoactive
Buy ETH
Overall, all cryptocurrency platforms offer ETH.
To name two reputable platforms, you can turn with confidence to Binance or Crypto.com.
Where to store your cryptocurrency
If you prefer to take your cryptocurrencies out of centralized exchanges, you can store your Ether through various solutions:
- Atomic Wallet, a very complete and secure software wallet.
- Trust Wallet, bought by Binance, it has become the benchmark mobile wallet.
- Ledger, very secure wallet hardwares, the best known being the Ledger Nano S.
- MetaMask, the decentralized wallet par excellence.
More details on the different types of cryptocurrency wallets on our dedicated page, accessible by clicking here.
Our opinion on this project
Ethereum is the pioneer of the concept of smart contracts platform on blockchains.
The Ethereum platform is a real success, especially on the technical level, by bringing innovations in abundance. According to Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders, this blockchain is designed to be a kind of “one computer for the whole world”. Isn’t that wonderful?
Constantly and continuously updated, this protocol is at the dawn of a major turning point in its development which will open up new perspectives. Called Serenity, or ETH 2.0, the next upgrade will allow the implementation of sharding, in order to increase the scalability of the platform, improve the virtual machine with eWASM and above all, move to proof of stake.
Ethereum has an army of developers, led by the much respected Vitalik Buterin, an icon in the cryptocurrency world. We can therefore be serene about the future of Ethereum, which should find a solution to all the problems it will encounter, while constantly improving its network which continues to prove its worth.
Ethereum is the great leader of altcoins, but nevertheless remains the eternal second in the ranking, behind the King Bitcoin. Is it meant to stay that way? The future will tell.
