Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual tokens that use cryptography to secure their transactions and to control the creation of new units. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized, meaning they are not subject to government or financial institution control.
Bitcoin, the first and most well-known cryptocurrency, was created in 2009.
Since then, hundreds of other cryptocurrencies have been created. These are often called altcoins, as a combination of alternative coin.
Ethereum is one of the most popular altcoins and it is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin.
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of fraud or third party interference. In other words, Ethereum is a programmable blockchain.
It allows developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in the past (like a will or a futures contract) and many other things that have not been invented yet, all without a middleman or counterparty risk.
The Ethereum blockchain tracks the state of every account in the network. This is unlike Bitcoin, which only tracks ownership of digital currency units called UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs). State transitions in Ethereum are transfers of value and information between accounts.
They are executed by so-called Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVMs) and stored on the blockchain. Each account has its own blockchain address and can send ether (the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum) to other accounts as well as deploy and interact with contracts.
Contracts are pieces of code that can be deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. They can be written in Solidity (a JavaScript-like language) or Vyper (a Python-like language).
Contracts live on the blockchain in an Ethereum-specific binary format (EVM bytecode). When they are created, they are assigned an address on the blockchain that anyone can send ether to.
A contract can also contain code functions that perform computations and have an internal state that is stored on the blockchain. For example, a contract could be used to represent a token in a decentralized application (DApp).
The total supply of tokens could be stored in an variable inside the contract and anyone could send ether to the contract’s address to purchase tokens. The contract would then deduct the amount of ether sent from the sender’s account balance and add it to the recipient’s account balance.
A simple contract like this could be used to create a basic token with no special features. However, more complex contracts can be created that have all sorts of functionality including storage of data on the blockchain, execution of arbitrary code (known as “smart contracts”), implementation of token standards like ERC20 and ERC721, and more.
Ethereum’s popularity has led to it being added as a base currency on popular cryptocurrency exchanges such as Kraken. This means that you can trade ETH directly for other cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies such as USD, EUR, CAD, etc.
on Kraken without having to first convert it to Bitcoin (BTC). .
If you’re thinking about staking ETH on Kraken, there are a few things you should consider first.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is that staking ETH on Kraken is only possible if you hold your ETH in a Kraken account – you cannot stake ETH that is held in another wallet such as Ledger Nano S or MetaMask . So if you want to stake your ETH on Kraken, you will need to transfer it from your current wallet into a Kraken account first.
Another thing to keep in mind is that staking ETH on Kraken will tie up your ETH for a certain period of time – typically around 3 months – during which you will not be able to trade or use your ETH for any other purpose besides staking .
So if you’re thinking about staking ETH on Kraken , make sure you’re okay with tying up your ETH for several months at a time , and remember that you’ll need to transfer your ETH into a Kraken account first . Other than that , staking ETH on Kraken is relatively straightforward – just go to the “Stake” page on Krakens website , select how much ETH you want to stake , and follow the instructions .