Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized platform for applications that run exactly as programmed without any chance of fraud, censorship or third-party interference.
This means Ethereum can be used to create new markets, disrupt industries and build revolutionary new applications.
I first came across Ethereum in 2013 when I read word of the then prospective project's vision to "decentralize the internet.
In 2014, the Ethereum Project launched their "Genesis" pre-sale for funding the development of Ethereum. The last pre-sale sold out entirely in 20 minutes bringing in an amount totalling over $18 million USD (ETH).
The Ethereum Foundation was started in 2015 to continue working on the development of Ethereum as well as keep public info up to date with news and announcements.
The Ethereum network is also one of the first to implement the concept of smart contracts, a kind of code that runs exactly as programmed without any chance of fraud, censorship or third-party interference.
Smart contracts allow for self-enforcing agreements automatically executed when specific conditions are met.
The Ethereum concept started when founder Vitalik Buterin came up with the idea in 2013. In his words "After watching Bitcoin's price sky rocket, with no foreseeable downside, I had an idea."
"My goal in creating Ethereum was to create a platform that is more useful than just "money" used only for financial transactions. It needed to be something that could replace the internet itself – a distributed computing infrastructure."
He went on to unveil Ethereum at the North American Bitcoin Conference held in early 2014.
His statement caught the attention of many and many developers started working on the platform.
What is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)?
Ethereum is a decentralized, distributed computing platform that features smart contract functionality. It was designed to be an upgraded and improved version of the Bitcoin network with the intended purpose of solving issues like scalability and governance. One such issue in Bitcoin (and other blockchain-based systems) is that there exists no determinate way for developers to write smarter contracts in order to perform more advanced tasks than simple transfers of value. Ethereum addresses this with its Virtual Machine, or EVM.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a Turing Complete machine. This means that it can compute any possible mathematical function and, hence, run arbitrary bytecode of any language that is compatible with it, such as Solidity (the Ethereum programming language). This makes the EVM extremely powerful and versatile. It can perform the same operations as an actual computer because of its ability to run arbitrary code. This is why the EVM is widely regarded as one of the blockchain world's most revolutionary and powerful innovations.
Hence, developers can use it to create decentralized apps (DApps), or software that operates on a peer-to-peer network of computers rather than a central server. DApps are often referred to as 'decentralized' because they run based on blockchain technology and users are not required to trust a centralized authority, such as a company or government, in order to use them.
