$ETH $ADA Ethereum’s 2015 debut introduced a programmable layer that transformed blockchains from static ledgers into bustling, decentralized marketplaces for everything from art to arbitrage. A little over two years later, Cardano entered the fray with an “academic-first” approach that promised to fix what Ethereum was still figuring out. In 2025, these two platforms anchor many “Which crypto should I buy?” debates, yet they are built on markedly different blueprints.This article unpacks those blueprints. We’ll explore histories, consensus mechanics, token economics, staking and real-world deployments, then explore the technical elements so investors can decide which network, if either, fits their portfolio. Ethereum’s white paper was published in late 2013, and the network went live on July 30, 2015. Its founding mission was bold: to become a “world computer” that would let anyone deploy self-executing smart contracts without third-party involvement. That vision has delivered a thriving decentralised finance (DeFi) market, a multibillion-dollar NFT industry and a developer community that dwarfs any other blockchain. Two headline upgrades reshaped that trajectory. EIP-1559 (August 2021) introduced fee-burning, partially offsetting new ETH issuance. Then the Merge (September 15, 2022) swapped energy-intensive proof-of-work mining for proof-of-stake (PoS), cutting the network’s electricity footprint by roughly 99.95% Ethereum still dominates smart-contract activity, but the network’s popularity may be its curse: base-layer transactions remain comparatively slow and expensive despite a constellation of Layer-2 rollups racing to ease the bottlenecks. A spring-2025 Pectra upgrade has lowered costs and raised the validator cap, yet daily fees still spike during on-chain frenzies.#writetoearn