Emmirald News: Ethereum (overview & history)

Considered one of the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, Ethereum is a major contender for the Bitcoin throne in the crypto world

Ethereum could looks like just another cryptocurrency but it’s normally a worldwide operated super computer. It might sound like science fiction but it’s true. like Bitcoin’s network, Ethereum is run on millions of devices around the globe. The actual innovation of this decentralized cryptocurrency network was the unique ability to perform smart contracts on its blockchain. Most people, however, still use Ethereum primarily as cryptocurrency. It remains one of the most popular altcoins in the world and a darling amongst developers and investors alike.

Read on: how does Ethereum works

Ethereum was invented in late 2013 by one of its inventors, Vitalik Buterin. It was later picked up and pursued by co-founders Joseph Lubin and Gavin Wood. During July and August in 2014, Ethereum raised money through a crowdsale, and then formally launched the platform in July 2015.

Ethereum was largely responsible for the cryptocurrency bubble that took place in 2017. This bubble inflated the price of Ether to $1432.88 USD. Ethereum, as a platform made it very easy for people to have their own token, or cryptocurrency. This in turn catalysed a rally in the industry, with most projects raising millions of dollars for their project with nothing more than just a whitepaper. Much like when a company is taken public in an Initial Public Offering (IPO), the cryptocurrency equivalent is called the Initial Coin Offering. ICO’s became very easy to build, launch, and implement with Ethereum as a base platform.

The ease of implementing new tokens came from engineering a “template coin” that allowed for anyone with a simple knowledge of Ethereum to launch their own token. This template standard is known as ERC20, through this, you will often read that a token or coin is an ERC20 token.

Read on: advantage & disadvantage of Ethereum

With numerous projects selecting Ethereum as a platform in which to run their newly crafted cryptocurrency, problems with scaling the network became an issue. Ethereum can process between 20 and 30 transactions per second. When comparing this number to VISA or Mastercard, Ethereum falls short of being able to handle a worldwide load of transactions.

The Ethereum Foundation, which is the governing body that guides the uptake of Ethereum have planned numerous milestones and upgrades to the Ethereum network that in theory, will allow the network to scale to become the global transaction supercomputer that it originally promised to be. These upgrades are dubbed Byzantium, Constantinople, and Serenity. The upgrades range from support for secure random numbers, to sharding. Once completed and deployed, these upgrades will form the Ethereum 2.0 network.

Read on: history of cryptocurrency

Best Ethereum wallets

When storing your Ethereum, there are lots of wallets you can use, including the following:

Keepkey

Ledger NanoS

Trezor Model T

Exodus wallet

Atomic wallet

Jaxx Liberty

Ledger Nano X

Trezor one

Best exchanges for buying Ethereum