The Ethereum Network
Back in 2013, Vitalik Buterin, a Bitcoin programmer and publisher of the Bitcoin magazine, published the Ethereum whitepaper. Ethereum aimed to apply Blockchain technology beyond payments.
Ethereum is a general-purpose blockchain. Like many other Blockchains, it’s open-source, public and has its own currency: Ether or ETH.
A general-purpose blockchain means there is a decentralised platform providing a programming language that developers can use to create Smart Contracts. Smart Contractsrun in each node of the network, making it possible to develop decentralised applications called DApps. These DApps inherit the remarkable features of blockchain technology, meaning they are tamper-proof, transparent, trustworthy and secure.
Issues and Challenges Facing Ethereum
The main problem Ethereum is facing is scalability. The network is supposed to be the “world computer”, but at the moment it can only handle around 15 transactions per second, while private companies like Visa can handle up to 45,000 transactions per second. This is an issue that needs to be solved if Ethereum wants massive adoption. This will allow for better projects to be built on top of Ethereum. To show why this issue is critical, we can look at the example of the CryptoKitties project. Back in 2017, this project gained so much popularity that the transactions executed on the Smart Contract congested the network. Therefore there was a…
