Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of fraud or third party interference.
Ethereum is a platform for decentralized applications. It is powered by Ether, a crypto token that is used to pay for gas, a unit of computation used in Ethereum.
Ethereum was initially proposed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer. He was later joined by Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin.
Ethereum was crowdfunded in 2014 with a presale of Ether tokens. It went live on 30 July 2015, with 72 million ETH mined to date.
The Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss non-profit, is the largest contributor to the Ethereum protocol. Other major contributors include the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance, Microsoft, and ConsenSys.
As of January 2018, Ethereum had the second largest market cap after Bitcoin, and the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), is mined through a proof-of-work algorithm. ETH is used to pay for gas, a unit of computation used in Ethereum.
Gas is used to pay for computations on the Ethereum network.
In May 2016, a DAO called The DAO raised $150 million USD from investors to fund development of decentralized applications on the Ethereum platform. The funds were stolen due to a flaw in The DAO’s code.
This event led to the hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain into two separate blockchains: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Ethereum has been used to create decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. dApps are apps that run on the decentralized Ethereum network, and are often compared to traditional apps that run on centralized networks such as the App Store or Google Play Store.
dApps do not have a single point of failure, and are more resistant to censorship than traditional apps.
Smart contracts are programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain. They can be used to create decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
A DAO is an organization that is run by code instead of by humans. The code governing a DAO can be programmed to do things like distribute rewards to members based on their contribution, or allow members to vote on proposals.
The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, is a Russian-Canadian programmer who was born in Russia and raised in Canada. He first became interested in Bitcoin in 2011, and he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2012.
He later proposed the creation of Ethereum in 2013. As of January 2018, he was estimated to be worth $1 billion USD.