Thoughts on Ethereum

Summarizing my thoughts about Ethereum within the Devcon V Scholar Program

The Ethereum network was introduced by Vitalik Buterin at the end of 2013. Unlike Bitcoin, each block represents the change of the chronological state of a global machine. This means, the Ethereum network is a global single state supercomputer, which is stored in each network node.

Ethereum allows programming more complex restrictions for the execution of transactions in the network. These programs are called smart contracts. And once it is deployed in the main network, it has its own address to call its execution.

The Ethereum network has two types of addresses: the external wallets (similar to the wallets of the Bitcoin network) and the internal wallets or those belonging to smart contracts. Transactions always start from an external account to another external account or to a contract account. This, in addition, can trigger other internal transactions in the network.

The miners of transactions in this network are responsible for processing the logic of smart contracts. The processing of each operation has a cost in Gas (the equivalent of the fee in transactions in the Bitcoin network).

The smart contracts allow programming the business logic on the blockchain. In this way, our application will always be available and decentralized. Also, the creation of new protocols and value assets is possible (with Ether, the native currency as a backup). Soon the protocol will replace proof of work by proof of stake.

As far as I know, Ethereum represents an important step in the evolution of Blockchain technology. And this step is a new dawn for the software industry.

The flexibility of Ethereum platform is what made it popular among the early Bitcoin and blockchain enthusiasts. In fact, while Bitcoin has been designed as a currency to transact value between different actors, Ethereum has been developed to extend the use of Bitcoin’s underlying technology and build a broader, general purpose blockchain. Its mean, thanks to Vitalik, our cryptocurrencies can now have functionality. In addition to the ERC20 which is the standard for the definition of a token, we also find the ERC827 which gives functionality to the meta-token created. that is, besides being able to create a currency, we can create meta-smart contract. Uff .. many thoughts come to my head. We will already dedicate a post exclusively to the standards and the new possibilities that are opened in the Ethereum network with the updates that appear every day.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of the Ethereum Foundation.