The live price of Ethereum is - per (ETH / USD) with a current market cap of $302.75B USD. 24-hour trading volume is - USD. ETH to USD price is updated in real-time. Ethereum is -% in the last 24 hours with a circulating supply of 120.73M.
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Ethereum (ETH) is an open-source, decentralized blockchain network that is a second-generation blockchain based on the Bitcoin blockchain network. Ethereum has some significant differences and improvements over the Bitcoin blockchain. It supports digital payments using its native currency, Ether (ETH), and serves as a software platform for creating and deploying decentralized applications (DApps) or smart contracts.
At the current price of ETH, Ethereum is the second largest digital currency by market capitalization, second only to Bitcoin. Ethereum has changed the digital currency industry by introducing smart contract functionality to blockchain networks. Smart contracts allow users and developers to open up new frontiers.
The Ethereum network is designed to be a global computer that anyone can use. It is designed to give users full control over their digital assets and allow them to access tools and services that are traditionally controlled by centralized entities.
For example, on the Ethereum blockchain, anyone can put up digital currency as collateral and get an instant loan. In the traditional financial world, this process would be hosted by a centralized entity. With Ethereum, every aspect of the functionality can be handled entirely by smart contracts on the blockchain. This eliminates the need for third-party platforms.
The Ethereum blockchain also makes any program resistant to censorship, perfectible, and not susceptible to fraud by running and serving it on a distributed network of public nodes located around the world.
In the spirit of decentralized ownership, anyone can submit a governance proposal that they think will improve Ethereum for the collective benefit of the project. Once a proposal is submitted, holders of Ethereum tokens can vote on its outcome. In this way, the Ethereum community is accountable for the results of the development it is doing.
Due to the seemingly endless possibilities of blockchain technology and smart contract functionality, Ethereum has spawned several multi-billion dollar industries. These include DeFi, play-and-earn blockchain games, and the much-praised NFT space. Today, the Ethereum blockchain is home to over 2,900 different projects and has processed over $11 trillion in value.
The native token of the Ethereum blockchain is called ETH. Ether is used to pay fees (GAS) when completing transactions on the network. It is also the currency for digital currency assets stored on the blockchain, just like NFTs. After the Ethereum merge, ETH will be used to secure the network and produce new blocks.
The Ethereum blockchain previously operated on a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which required a lot of computation from all decentralized nodes within the blockchain.
In September 2022, Ethereum successfully transitioned to a Proof of Stake model, a major upgrade called "Merge" that had been highly anticipated for many years. This transition fundamentally changed the operation of Ethereum. Since the network is now secured using staked ETH and validators, the need to mine new blocks is eliminated. The Ethereum Foundation has clearly stated that the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake will significantly reduce Ethereum's energy usage by 99.95%.
In July 2014, the Ethereum Foundation launched the ETH Initial Coin Offering (ICO). During this public sale, approximately 60 million ETH were distributed to investors at an initial exchange rate of 2,000 ETH to 1 BTC.
At the time, this put the price of ETH at approximately $0.31. Ether was distributed to investors at the genesis block of the Ethereum network.
When the Ethereum mainnet launched, the initial ETH token supply was approximately 72 million. While most tokens were distributed to early investors, 16.73% of the supply was allocated to the Ethereum Foundation.
As of now, the circulating supply of Ethereum tokens is approximately 122 million. Since the genesis block of the Ethereum mainnet, approximately 48 million ETH have been added to the supply through token generation.
New ETH tokens are generated and distributed to miners through block rewards, making Ethereum an inflationary digital currency. While the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1,559 London hard fork update introduced some deflationary mechanisms, these mechanisms do not currently fully offset Ethereum's inflation.
The issuance of Ethereum block rewards has been steadily decreasing. When the network initially launched, new Ether was generated at a rate of 5 ETH per block. These rewards are given to miners as an incentive to secure the network and verify transactions. In October 2017, as part of the EIP 649 proposal, this issuance was reduced to 3 ETH per block.
The road to completing Ethereum 2.0 consists of multiple milestone phases, each of which will introduce innovative features and functionality to the network.
The roadmap includes three main phases:
Phase 0: Beacon Chain (already live)
Phase 1: Merger (already live)
Phase 2: Sharding (2023-2024)
The third major phase of the upgrade is sharding, which introduces horizontal database expansion. This optimization feature aims to reduce hardware requirements, lower data storage costs, and enable everyone to become a validator.
As demand for Ethereum grows, the network's core architecture has begun to show signs of congestion, with the average transaction fee per transaction rising significantly. As a result, one of the biggest challenges facing the Ethereum blockchain is charging too high a fee (GAS) when the network is highly congested. For example, in May 2021, the average cost of a basic transaction on the network was about $71.
The Ethereum merger, known as ETH 2.0, is a multi-year plan to gradually move the Ethereum blockchain from its PoW to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. While this shift will not immediately solve the problem of high gas fees, it will make Ethereum a greener and more efficient blockchain network.
In the PoW system, Ethereum miners compete with each other, using expensive computing resources, adding new blocks to the chain, and receive ETH rewards in return. However, in the PoS model, they will no longer have to mine blocks.
Instead, when selected, they will create and add new blocks, and when not required, they will validate other blocks. To earn the right to become a validator, they must stake 32 ETH in the blockchain. In addition, since there is no competition between validators, they will no longer need expensive and advanced hardware such as mining equipment.
Even though the Ethereum team has been planning this transition since 2016, it only launched the PoS Beacon Chain on December 1, 2020.
This marks Phase 0 of Ethereum’s 3-phase process of transitioning from a single PoW chain to a multi-chain PoS network. Listed below are the three phases and how they intend to transform Ethereum:
Phase 0 (Beacon Chain)
As mentioned above, this involves the launch of the Beacon Chain, a Proof-of-Stake blockchain that runs in parallel to the original PoW Ethereum mainnet. Furthermore, it lays the foundation for future upgrades to Ethereum. As of now, more than 410,000 validators on the Beacon Chain have staked a total of more than 13 million ETH.
Phase 1 (Merge)
Scheduled for Q3/Q4 2022, the merger involves merging the Beacon Chain with the existing Ethereum blockchain, completely replacing the latter’s PoWmodel with the former’s PoS system. After the merger, the original Ethereum blockchain will become the “execution” layer of the new network, while the Beacon Chain will become its “consensus” layer.
Phase 2 (Sharding)
Expected to launch in 2023-2024, Sharding will expand Ethereum’s capabilities by spreading the network load across 64 new shard chains. The current PoW Ethereum chain will become one of these 64 shards. It will become much easier to run a mining node at this point, as there will be far less data to store than on a single PoW Ethereum blockchain.
By transitioning to a PoS consensus mechanism, the Ethereum network will be more energy-efficient and secure than before. In addition, the consensus model will allow for greater scalability when the Ethereum blockchain implements transaction sharding, significantly increasing transaction throughput and boosting network speed.
In a recent post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin identified three major technical "transitions" that are critical to Ethereum's success, namely Layer-2 expansion, wallet security, and privacy enhancements. He stressed that without an effective expansion infrastructure to make transactions affordable, Ethereum is essentially "failed." He also highlighted the complexity of the transition to smart contract wallets, especially the user experience of handling multiple addresses. Buterin finally reminded that identity, reputation, and social recovery systems must be enhanced to improve privacy. Buterin admitted that it is "challenging" to achieve all three transitions at the same time, which will require close coordination from all parties.
When the Ethereum blockchain was initially launched in 2015, it used a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. In this model, new ETH tokens are created and distributed to miners as a reward for producing new blocks and maintaining the blockchain.
This means that high-performance computing hardware devices, called mining rigs, compete with each other in solving the complex equations involved in the mining process. The first miner to solve the equation is awarded the right to lead the production of new blocks on the network and is rewarded with newly minted tokens. This is also the model used by the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Ethereum blockchain also has an account-based architecture. An Ethereum account is essentially an entity that holds a balance of Ethereum (ETH) and can initiate transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. There are two types of Ethereum accounts.
The first is an "external account," which is controlled and managed by the user through their private keys. The second type is "contract accounts", also known as smart contracts, which are managed by their own code. Both accounts can hold, receive and send ETH and other Ethereum-supported tokens, and interact with smart contracts deployed on the blockchain.
External accounts can initiate transactions with other external accounts and smart contracts. But smart contracts only work when they interact with external accounts or other smart contracts. They can only respond by triggering code (involving multiple operations), transferring digital currency, or even creating new smart contracts.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) forms the core of the Ethereum blockchain. The EVM is the environment where all Ethereum accounts and smart contracts reside. It is a computing engine or virtual machine that functions like a distributed computer and accommodates millions of executable programs.
In other words, the EVM forms the cornerstone of Ethereum's complete operating structure. As a single entity, the EVM is maintained simultaneously by thousands of interconnected computers (nodes) running Ethereum clients.
Unlike Bitcoin, which uses a distributed ledger, Ethereum uses a distributed "state machine". The "state" of Ethereum at any given point is a large data structure that contains accounts and balances as well as the "machine state" at that time.
It also contains the ability to host and execute a lot of low-level machine code. This "state" is constantly changing between different blocks, and the EVM defines the rules for changing it.
The Ethereum network has many use cases, of which the ability to create and deploy smart contracts is core to all of them. This feature allows developers to develop a variety of decentralized applications on the platform, including crypto wallets, decentralized exchanges, DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, blockchain games, and more.
Its token standards, such as ERC-20 and ERC-721, have been widely used to create fungible and non-fungible tokens, facilitating a variety of multi-billion dollar projects. In particular, NFT tokens based on the ERC-721 standard have pioneered the NFT sector, an industry that will reach $3 billion in 2022 and is expected to exceed $13.6 billion by 2027.
On the other hand, Ethereum's native digital currency ETH also has multiple use cases, the main one being a means of paying transaction fees on the Ethereum network.
Any time a user transfers ETH or Ethereum-based tokens, or interacts with any application hosted on the platform, ETH needs to be paid as a gas fee. In the future, ETH will also be actively used for verification purposes on the new proof-of-stake Ethereum blockchain, with active validators needing to stake 32 ETH to be competent for this job.
The idea for Ethereum was originally described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin (V God) at the end of 2013. Vitalik Buterin was only 19 years old when he wrote this white paper.
Before coming up with the concept of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin was an experienced programmer and developer who previously founded the Bitcoin Magazine news website
Ethereum was first introduced in a white paper written by Vitalik Buterin in 2013.
With the help of co-founders Gavin Woods and Anthony Di Iorio, Vitalik secured funding for the project in an online crowdfunding sale held in 2014 that was open to the public. This enabled the project to secure enough funding to launch the blockchain on July 30, 2015.
The current circulating supply of Ethereum is 117,765,776 tokens. The Ethereum platform has no cap on its maximum supply.
What is the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin? Ethereum, like Bitcoin, is a distributed public blockchain network. While there are some major technical differences between the two, the most important difference to note is that Bitcoin and Ethereum have very different purposes and capabilities. While the Bitcoin blockchain is used to track ownership of digital currency (Bitcoins), the Ethereum blockchain is focused on running the programming code of any decentralized application.
No one can predict the price of Ether (ETH), but the price of this token has risen sharply due to the continued popularity of DApps and NFTs. As always, please do your own research and carefully evaluate cryptocurrencies before exposing yourself to any financial risks.
As of August 2020, Ethereum is protected by the "Ethash Proof of Work" algorithm, which belongs to the Keccak family of hash functions.
However, there are plans to upgrade the network to the Proof of Stake algorithm used by the current mainstream Ethereum 2.0 update, which is expected to take place in late 2020 or early 2021.
There are three ways to mine Ethereum. The first is mining pool mining, the second is stand-alone mining, and the third is cloud mining.
Before the transition to the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, users can mine ETH by creating an Ethereum wallet, installing the Ethereum software on a computing device, and choosing the mining method they want.
You can also trade Ethereum with other cryptocurrencies on cryptocurrency trading platforms.
Ethereum is the first "pioneer" to propose the concept of a blockchain smart contract platform. A smart contract is a computer program that automatically performs the necessary actions to fulfill an agreement between multiple parties on a network. It is designed to reduce the need for trusted intermediaries between contracting parties, thereby reducing transaction fees and enhancing the reliability of transactions.
Ethereum's main innovation is that it has designed a platform that can execute smart contracts using blockchain, thereby further strengthening the technical advantages of existing smart contracts. According to co-founder Gavin Wood, the Ethereum blockchain is designed to be "one computer for the entire planet." In theory, by running the Ethereum blockchain on a network of public nodes spread across the globe, any program can be made more robust, censorship-resistant, and less susceptible to fraud.
In addition to smart contracts, Ethereum's blockchain can host other cryptocurrencies (they are called "tokens") through its ERC-20 compatibility standard. In fact, this is by far the most commonly used feature of the Ethereum platform: to date, the platform has launched more than 280,000 ERC-20-compliant tokens. 40 of these tokens are among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, such as Tether (USDT), LINK, and Binance Coin (BNB).
A hard fork is a change to the underlying Ethereum protocol that creates new rules to improve the protocol that is not backwards compatible. All Ethereum clients need to upgrade; otherwise, they will be stuck on an incompatible chain that follows the old rules.
A smart contract is an application code located at a specific address on the blockchain (called a contract address). Applications can call smart contract functions, change its state, and initiate transactions. Smart contracts are written in programming languages such as Solidity and Vyper, compiled into bytecode by the Ethereum Virtual Machine and executed on the blockchain.
The Ethereum to other currencies exchange rate?
