What is ethereum?
Ethereum is a network, like Bitcoin, created to support its own cryptocurrency -ether (ETH) - in addition to smart contracts, which in turn are executed using ethers as a currency. Ethereum is a turing-complete computational platform based on blockchain, public and open source, that functions as a virtual machine distributed in an international network of public nodes. Ethereum was proposed and created by Vitalik Buterin in 2015, together with a group of programmers and investors, with the purpose of becoming a platform for decentralized and collaborative operations. Among its main characteristics is the use of a unit for the valuation of computational effort and the number of operations necessary to execute its code, called “Gas”, whose purpose is to achieve the computational efficiency of the network.
What does Ethereum mean?
The meaning of ethereum comes from the definition of the word ether:
The ether is an invisible, weightless and elastic hypothetical fluid, which was considered to fill the entire space and constituted the transmitting medium of all manifestations of energy.
What is ether?
Ether is the currency of Ethereum. It is a token that can be used in transactions that use this software and that serves as payment for the execution of applications in the Ethereum blockchain. Therefore, we can say that ether is the cryptocurrency and Ethereum is the platform that allows applications to run.
That is, to run an application or delete or modify something on the Ethereum network, we must pay a transaction fee on Ether for the blockchain to process that change.
If you are looking for a long-term investment, without a doubt, ethereum is a very good investment given its current monetary value compared to its projection as a product.