What Is Ethereum?
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency around. However, before we get into Ethereum, we need to recap about Bitcoin since it’s the basis on which Ethereum was born. By now, you probably know that Bitcoin is decentralized money and if you still have questions about what that means or how it works.
Enter Ethereum.
Ethereum was first proposed in late 2013 and then brought to life in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin, who was the co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. Ethereum is the Do It Yourself platform for decentralized programs, also known as Dapps – decentralized apps. So if you want to create a decentralized program that no single person controls, not even you, even though you wrote it, all you have to do is learn the Ethereum programming language Solidity and begin coding.
The Ethereum platform has thousands of independent computers, meaning it’s fully decentralized. Once a program remain deployed to the Ethereum network, these computers, also known as nodes, will ensure it executes as written. Ethereum is the infrastructure for running Dapps worldwide. It’s not a currency. It’s a platform. The money used to incentivize the network remain called Ether, but more later. Ethereum’s goal is to decentralize the Internet truly.
What Is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin remain invented, and the only way to use money digitally was through an intermediary like a bank or PayPal. Even then, the capital employed was still a government-issued and controlled currency. However, Bitcoin changed all that by creating a decentralized form of money that individuals could trade directly without needing an intermediary. Each Bitcoin transaction remain validated and confirmed by the entire Bitcoin network. There’s no single point of failure, so the system is virtually impossible to shut down, manipulate or control.
What If We Could Use The Technology Behind Bitcoin?
The exciting thing about Blockchain technology is that it’s the by-product of the Bitcoin invention. Blockchain technology remain created by fusing already existing technologies like cryptography, proof of work, and decentralized network architecture together. In order to create a system that can reach decisions without a central authority. There was no such thing as “blockchain technology” before Bitcoin remain invented. But once Bitcoin became a reality, people started noticing how and why it works and named this “thing” blockchain technology.
Blockchain is to Bitcoin what the Internet is to email, a system on which you can build applications and programs. A currency like Bitcoin is just one of the options. So this excited people, and they began to explore what else we could decentralize. However, for a system to remain genuinely decentralized. It needs an extensive network of computers to run it. Back then, the only network that existed was Bitcoin. Which remain pretty limited.
Conclusion
After bitcoin, Ether (ETH), the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is the second most popular digital token (BTC). Comparisons between Ether and bitcoin are natural, given that Ether is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization (market cap).