Find out everything about Ethereum- history, growth, developments, and market cap.

Ethereum is the community-run technology powering the cryptocurrency, ether (ETH), and thousands of decentralized applications. It uses blockchain technology to advance smart contracts and cryptocurrency trading securely without a third party. Through Ethereum there are two accounts available, one is the externally owned account and the other one is the contract account. Ethereum enables developers to utilize all kinds of decentralized apps. Even though Bitcoin takes the position of the most popular cryptocurrency, it's Ethereum's hostile growth that will soon outstrip Bitcoin in usage.

Ethereum's aim is to create an alternative protocol for constructing decentralized applications. These applications provide distinct trade-offs which are very effective for extensive division of decentralized applications. Specific importance is given on conditions where applications require rapid development time, efficient interaction, and security for moderate and seldom utilized applications

The Inception Saga

Vitalik Buterin, a programmer and co-founder of Bitcoin magazine, initially described Ethereum in a white paper in late 2013 intending to build decentralized applications. Buterin proclaimed that Bitcoin and blockchain technology could benefit from other applications besides money and needed a more robust language for application development that could lead to attaching real-world assets, such as stocks and property, to the blockchain. In 2013, Buterin briefly worked with eToro CEO Yoni Assia on the Colored Coins project and drafted its white paper outlining additional use cases for blockchain technology. In 2014, progress work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015.

Growth of Ethereum

Ethereum has augmented on its predecessor's vision of a decentralized payments system building a global computer network that links users to a marketplace of decentralized applications (dApps) offering unprecedented efficiency, security, and user control. Through its ground-breaking combination of features like smart contracts, Ethereum is used for a variety of innovative applications in finance, web browsing, gaming, advertising, identity management, and supply chain management.

The Ethereum platform is used to generate tokens, which are used in a Coinbase wallet. It is a decentralized group of computers having two basic functions, i.e., a blockchain that records transactions and virtual machines that generate smart contracts. Due to these two functions, this platform can support decentralized applications. They charged the developers for the computation work in their network. They have used Ether currency. So, ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens function as a currency or share in an organization or company. These tokens are generated with the use of smart contracts. These smart contracts are used to help transactions of tokens and record the balances of a token in the user's account. These are written in the Solidity programming language. After the token has been generated, it can be traded, spent, or given to someone else.

Latest Applications and Developments of Ethereum

The Ethereum blockchain is powered by its native cryptocurrency, the ether (ETH), and enables developers to develop new types of ETH-based tokens that power dApps through the use of smart contracts. The most common ETH-based cryptocurrencies are built on the ERC-20 token standard. Ethereum smart contracts are self-executing contracts that facilitate, verify, and enforce transactions on the blockchain, and are a key innovation in Ethereum and blockchain.

NFTs or non-fungible tokens grew nearly ten-fold between 2018 and 2020, as can be seen in the market cap of NFTs worldwide. These digital blockchain assets can essentially function as a unique code connected to a digital file, allowing to distinguish the original file from any potential copies. NFT is a way to represent anything unique as an Ethereum-based asset. These are giving more power to content creators than ever before. This application is especially prominent in crypto art, although there are other applications: gaming, sports, and collectibles are other segments where NFT sales occur.

NFTs and Ethereum solve some of the problems that exist on the internet today. As everything becomes more digital, there's a need to replicate the properties of physical items like scarcity, uniqueness, and proof of ownership. Not to mention that digital items often only work in the context of their product. For example, you can't re-sell an iTunes mp3 you've purchased, or you can't exchange one company's loyalty points for another platform's credit even if there's a market for it.

NFTs are currently taking the digital art and collectibles world by storm. Digital artists are seeing their lives change thanks to huge sales to a new crypto-audience. And celebrities are joining in as they spot a new opportunity to connect with fans. But digital art is only one way to use NFTs. Really, they can be used to represent ownership of any unique asset, like a deed for an item in the digital or physical realm.

Ethereum 2.0

To ease some of the pressure, developers are turning to a concept called sharding that will create 64 new chains on the Ethereum network to further spread the volume. This will essentially take the massive amount of data currently being stored on Ethereum nodes and break it into smaller groups that will be stored on more databases, which will ease pressure on the current system and allow for more transactions per second. The sharding part of the process is very important and will also make the network more secure and sustainable. Sharding will eventually enable ordinary users to operate Ethereum on a personal device, increasing network participants and making the Ethereum blockchain more decentralized because there will be more users. The more users and the more nodes, the more complex it will become for hackers to take hold of a large part of the network.

Also, there is an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain which is named Ethereum 2.0 also known as Eth2. The upgrade aims to enhance the speed, efficiency, and scalability of the Ethereum network so that it can process more transactions and ease congestion.

Market Volatility of Ethereum

After Bitcoin, this is the second most valuable crypto coin in the world. The Ethereum (ETH) price in USD kept growing in value throughout April 2021, at one point reaching over 2,500 USD. Much like Bitcoin (BTC), the price of ETH went up in 2021. Overall Ethereum has experienced tremendous growth. In just five years, its price went from about $11 to over $3,000, increasing roughly more than 27,000%. Market cap: Over $357 Billion.

The Sudden Chain Split

In the last year, the cryptocurrency community has discussed that Ethereum faced a sudden hard fork or chain split. A number of crypto users and members complained about the network issues as well. Etherscan and blockchain showed two different chains and data after the block. However, this was a technical issue and was resolved but for a time being it caused major suffering to Ethereum.

A Glimpse to the Future

Price developments on Ethereum are difficult to predict, but cannot be seen without the world of Defi or Decentralized Finance. This industry used technology to remove intermediaries between parties in a financial transaction. One example includes crypto wallets such as Coinbase Wallet that grew in popularity in recent years, with other examples including smart contractor Uniswap, Maker (responsible for stable coin DAI), money lender Dharma and market protocol Compound. Ethereum's future developments are tied with this industry: Unlike Bitcoin and Ripple, Ethereum is technically not a currency but an open-source software platform for blockchain applications with Ether being the cryptocurrency that is used inside the Ethereum network.

Talking about Ethereum 2.0, if executed properly, it could be a total game-changer. It will create a network that could potentially process 100,000 transactions per second. It will also create a much more sustainable network without the energy-intensive mining and introduce smart contracts to the broader world, increasing Ethereum's real-world utility. Furthermore, Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has said that new-token issuance should be greatly reduced under Ethereum 2.0, which could increase demand.

In many ways, the Ethereum blockchain is like the Bitcoin blockchain, but still, there are few dissimilarities. With respect to the architecture of Blockchain, the blocks in Ethereum comprise a copy of the transaction list and the latest state whereas Bitcoin only contains a copy of the transaction list.