Ethereum — a decentralized computer and a revolution of smart contracts
After the emergence of Bitcoin, it became clear: value could be transferred without intermediaries. But one young programmer from Canada — Vitalik Buterin — asked himself:
What if we could make the blockchain a universal platform for creating any decentralized applications?
Thus, the idea of Ethereum was born — a network where not only tokens are transferred, but smart contracts are executed — code that operates on the principle of 'if this, then that', without human intervention.
The project started in 2015. Ethereum offered the world what Bitcoin was lacking — programmability. No longer is it necessary to build a separate blockchain for each task: it is enough to write a smart contract in Solidity, and it will live on the Ethereum blockchain, guaranteed to execute the embedded logic.
The idea proved to be powerful. Very soon, Ethereum began to see the emergence of:
ICO (Initial Coin Offerings) — the first cryptocurrency crowdfunding variant;
DeFi — decentralized finance with exchanges, staking, and loans without banks;
NFT — digital tokens of uniqueness that have forever changed art and gaming.
Ethereum became a true sandbox of innovation. But popularity came at a price. The network faced overloads and high fees. This became the impetus for the development of scaling solutions (L2) and the most ambitious update — the transition to Proof of Stake.
In September 2022, Ethereum successfully conducted The Merge — the transition from mining to staking. Now new blocks are created by validators who lock ETH in a contract and receive rewards for honest work. This reduced the network's energy consumption by more than 99%.
A plan for sharding is also gradually being implemented, where the network will be divided into parallel fragments for scaling. A new stage of development, known as Ethereum 2.0, is not yet complete, but is already in full swing.
Ethereum today is not just an altcoin. It is a whole ecosystem. It has become the infrastructure for all of Web3. It is supported by developers, investors, large corporations, and even governments. And despite the competition, ETH remains the core of the decentralized economy.
