TechDive: What’s Up With Ethereum

Published in

ABL Ecosystem

5 min readApr 5, 2018

When you think about Bitcoin, Blockchain is the next word to come to mind. When you talk about Blockchain, people will ask “DO YOU MEAN THAT BITCOIN THING?”

Although Bitcoin does get the most mainstream attention, there are a lot of other cryptocurrencies that deserve credit as well. Most notably on that list is Ethereum. Ethereum is probably the second biggest name in the blockchain world. In fact, it was the ever illustrious Ethereum which got me interested into the cryptoverse in the first place.

Bitcoin seemed too simple (although it’s not) for my liking. Ethereum, besides its rather exoitc name, seemed to have more potential. Essentially, it’s a mechanism that establishes the foundation of opportunity for cryptocurrencies. It allows dreamers to build their own fantasies and further escalate the capabilities and ambitions blockchain has enabled.

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is an open-sourced blockchain platform that gives developers the ability to create their own smart contracts that run on the blockchain.

“A smart contract is a mechanism involving digital assets and two or more parties, where some or all of the parties put assets in, and assets are automatically redistributed among those parties according to a formula based on certain data that is not known at the time the contract is initiated”. Vitalik Buterin.

If you don’t know to much about what that means, essentially Ethereum is open, adaptable, and not controlled by a central authority. This allows users to pretty much create anything they want on top if it! (both beautiful and ugly). Created by crypto legend, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum has accelerated the blockchain revolution to incredible levels of MADNESS.

What are the use cases? DAO? Token Sale? dApps?

There are three main use cases for the Ethereum platform that others can build on (at least what the website proclaims).

First off we have Democratic Autonomous Organizations, or DAO. Don’t be let off by the name, because DAO is actually a very simple concept — one that paves the way for the future of corporate structures. Essentially DAO is a set of rules and regulations that govern an organization. This is all controlled through the implementations smart contracts being triggered through a variety of different rule sets. This is an objective and seamless way to structure a company.

If you have ever heard of the term Initial Coin Offering (ICO) then you will realize it is a mechanism that is used to raise funds for a project by selling tokens to purchasers. The Ethereum platform helps facilitate this process through the implementation of smart contracts, creating specific agreements between the company and potential investors based on an exchange of Ether for tokens. This has established the backbone for obscure and creative blockchain ideas in becoming a reality. I call this an “unlocking mechanism” something that is necessary for a rapid and more mature growth in the crypto space.

”A token like Ethereum has gone up 10 times faster than bitcoin, and it’s fuelling an ICO bubble no different then the dot-com IPOs of the late ’90s.” Tone Vays.

Lastly, and MOST importantly (at least through my eyes), are Decentralized applications (dApps). This is where the idea comes from that Ethereum is like the Turing Machine. It’s a portal that is used for developers to build on. This outlines an almost infinite state of possibilities for developers to execute! Essentially if you need a platform that will be optimized through a decentralized, tamper-proof and cryptographic foundations (at least what they claim to be) then it’s opening the door for whoever dares to explore the endless bouts of opportunity.

Who are Ethereum’s competitors?

Ethereum has many competitors. Some notable names are EOS, Cardano, NEO, Qtum, Waves and Ethereum Classic. Honestly, this list can go on forever, however; not every coin listed is targeting the same demographics. There is also one very important thing to be understood — Ethereum is more developed than ALL of the other coins listed. Additionally, some of Ethereum’s direct competitors actually use Ethereum to create their own project (launch there ICO)! My confidence with Ethereum is quite high considering that essentially it is a first mover in the platform genre.

One of the biggest downfalls on being a primary project is that you end up being late for new and future blockchain implementations — more commonly referred to as crypto generations. Every future generation is basically built off of the past generations, so you can see where this can get tricky when looking at Ethereum and its competitors. Something to be said — just because Ethereum is only a 2nd generation coin, doesn’t mean that they can’t grow it to be a 3rd generation, or any new generation of coin (I will write up another article on the differences of these).

Ethereum is the Bitcoin Killer?

Everyone always talks about “what will take over Bitcoin for first place?” The answer is almost impossible to deliver. Although Ethereum is usually second to Bitcoin, there have been some issues in the past. Certain things like the DAO hack, or other wallet hackings that have occurred with Ethereum. Most of these events have been negative PR attacks against Ethereum, however; the biggest factor that facilitates these hacks is POOR programing. The Ethereum network itself has never been hacked. That being said, Bitcoin is in a different category: HUGE. The Bitcoin community is massive, opinionated and vocal. There are a lot of big names in the Bitcoin clan (OG’s) as well. This is directly correlated to the “first mover” concept. Bitcoin was first, Bitcoin is the king. That being said, Ethereum has been established to have more opportunity in the future. Being led by potentially the smartest mind in all of crypto (Vitalik Buterin) they can at some point become the King Ping.

Final Thoughts.

At the end of the day, Ethereum is what brought me into the crypto space in the first place. This is obviously a bias. Since I have been in the space for a while now, my opinion on Ethereum has remained positive. When researching all the different cryptocurrencies, you need to realize how primitive they all are. The fact that Ethereum is used to launch new tokens in itself is reason to understand that it is a foundational coin. If we want this blockchain revolution to succeed, we need something that will fuel the fire.

Ethereum is the catalyst.