After Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) is the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world after market capitalization. It has become known for the possibility of smart contracts and their use as the basis for “initial coin offering”.
What is Ethereum?
Central data centers have administrators who can change the rules of a network as desired. This is not possible on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum operates according to defined rules of the game that all players must comply with. One day, the platform for decentralized applications wants to be nothing less than the first world computer. The way to get there is through complete programmability.
The Etherum Foundation from Vitalik Buterin develops technologies for this platform from the Swiss canton of Zug. Solidity even created its programming language. Parties can find a digital consensus on joint projects through Ethereum and smart contracts. No matter where they are on the planet. A large number of ICOs are implemented with ECR-20 tokens that work on Ethereum.
What can Ethereum be used for?
Wherever there are problems with central administration, Ethereum makes sense. If authoritarian states censor the content of certain pages for parts of their population, it is because of their power to be able to access the DNS (Domain Name System) of the Internet centrally. This becomes impossible with Ethereum and the ENS (Ethereum Name Service). The smart contract only allows the structure to be changed after the entire network has reached a consensus. Other important use cases are ICOs and the emerging dAPP store for decentralized applications.
What opportunities are there for companies?
When several large companies work together on projects, legal problems, and thus costs arise when there are discrepancies. The problems of trust can be solved with Ethereum because the system cannot be corrupted by individuals. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has now brought together over 150 companies that are researching ways to use Ethereum for their goals, including global players from a wide range of industries such as BP, JP Morgan, and Mastercard.
What is a smart contract?
The processes behind the clever contracts can be compared to a marble game in which one ball hits the next and thus triggers a chain reaction. For the smart contracts, this means that input, such as a transaction or a delivery, triggers a sequence of reactions that is completely automatic at the recipient's output.
References:
https://ethereum.org
https://www.coindesk.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum