1.12.2 / 13 August 2023; 8 months ago (2023-08-13)
Development status
Active
Software used
EVM 1 Bytecode
Written in
Go, Rust, C#, C++, Java, Python, Nim, TypeScript
Operating system
Cross-platform
Platform
x86-64, ARM
Available in
Multilingual, but primarily English
Type
Distributed computing
License
Open-source licenses
Active hosts
~8,600 nodes (6 June 2023)[1]
Website
ethereum.org
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH;[a]) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization.[2][3] It is open-source software.
Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin.[4] Additional founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin.[5] In 2014, development work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015.[6] Ethereum allows anyone to deploy permanent and immutable decentralized applications onto it, with which users can interact.[7] Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications provide financial instruments that do not directly rely on financial intermediaries like brokerages, exchanges, or banks. This facilitates borrowing against cryptocurrency holdings or lending them out for interest.[8][9] Ethereum also allows users to create and exchange non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are tokens that can be tied to unique digital assets, such as images. Additionally, many other cryptocurrencies utilize the ERC-20 token standard on top of the Ethereum blockchain and have utilized the platform for initial coin offerings.
On 15 September 2022, Ethereum transitioned its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in an upgrade process known as "the Merge". This has cut Ethereum's energy usage by 99%.[10]
^"Clients". Ethernodes. 6 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
^Szalay, Eva; Venkataramakrishnan, Siddharth (28 May 2021). "What are cryptocurrencies and stablecoins and how do they work?". Financial Times. Retrieved 14 August 2021.
^Vigna, Paul (3 June 2021). "DeFi Is Helping to Fuel the Crypto Market Boom—and Its Recent Volatility". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 14 August 2021.
^Tapscott & Tapscott 2016, pp. 87.
^Paumgarten, Nick (15 October 2018). "The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 9 January 2020. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
^Foundation, Ethereum (30 July 2015). "Ethereum Launches". blog.ethereum.org. Archived from the original on 11 August 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
^Popper, Nathaniel (19 June 2017). "Move Over, Bitcoin. Ether Is the Digital Currency of the Moment. (Published 2017)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 8 July 2020. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
"Vapor No More: Ethereum Has Launched". TechCrunch. August 2015. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 17 February 2021.
^Vigna, Paul (3 May 2021). "Ethereum Is Booming in the NFT Frenzy—So Is Network Congestion". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on 9 May 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
^"There are two very real reasons Ethereum is taking off". Fortune. 6 May 2021. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
^Clark, Aaron (6 December 2022). "Ethereum's Energy Revamp Is No Guarantee of Global Climate Gains". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH;) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among...
on a public Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum Classic maintains the original, unaltered history of the Ethereum network. The Ethereum project's mainnet...
31 January 1994), is a Canadian computer programmer and co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding...
hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain. Most Ethereum miners and clients switched to the new fork while the original chain became Ethereum Classic. The governance...
for games on Ethereum when it created significant congestion on the Ethereum network in early 2018 with approximately 30% of all Ethereum transactions[clarification...
cryptocurrency wallet used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to access their Ethereum wallet through a browser extension or mobile...
introduced by Ethereum are generally considered a fundamental building block for decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT applications. The original Ethereum white...
Gavin James Wood is an English computer scientist, a co-founder of Ethereum and creator of Polkadot and Kusama. Wood was born in Lancaster, England, United...
process known as "the Merge". According to the Ethereum Founder, the upgrade can cut both Ethereum's energy use and carbon-dioxide emissions by 99.9%...
been popularised by distributed ledger technologies (DLT), such as the Ethereum or Cardano blockchain, on which DApps are built, amongst other public blockchains...
ability for users to purchase a derivative of Litecoin along with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash which could not be withdrawn or spent as part of its Crypto...
implementing smart contracts on various blockchain platforms, most notably, Ethereum. Solidity is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0. Solidity was...
non-custodial, fully decentralized cryptocurrency tumbler that runs on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks. It offers a service that mixes potentially...
are subject to Simplex's local bank policies and are limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple's XRP. On 7 May 2019, Binance revealed that it had...
IOHK), and the Cardano blockchain platform, and was a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform. Hoskinson "attended Metropolitan State University...
BLS12-381 signatures were used extensively in version 2 (Eth2) of the Ethereum blockchain, as specified in the IETF draft BLS signature specification—for...
the addition to its Board of notable advisors such as Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum co-founder and inventor) and Jared Birchall (representing Elon Musk). In...
DAO's funds to a subsidiary account. The Ethereum community controversially decided to hard-fork the Ethereum blockchain to restore approximately all funds...
laboratory in the United States One of the programming languages used in Ethereum This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title LLL....
March 2017, Coinbase obtained BitLicense and was licensed to trade in Ethereum and Litecoin from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS)...
sometimes referred to as "Big Tech". The term "Web3" was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency...
Global Information