If you have ever wondered what Ethereum is, you have come to the right place to ask. Ethereum is a software system and a blockchain-based distributed computing platform. Its code has become the standard for a major part of decentralized projects. Today everything from networking apps to decentralized games is created using Ethereum.
At the same time, Ethereum is a very popular cryptocurrency generated by the Ethereum platform (also called Ether). Despite being 100 percent decentralized, Ethereum retains a core group of developers who manage the platform and other employees who promote it. Some believe that it's exactly this core group that made Ethereum wildly popular.
Proposed by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013, Ethereum was funded through crowdfunding in the summer of 2014. The system was up and running by the end of July 2015, with 72 million pre-mined coins accounting for about 70% of the total in 2019. The rest is history!
Oh, wait. To see the whole picture, you should also know what Ethereum Classic (ETC) is and how it came to be. As a result of the exploitation of a flaw in the software in 2016, $50 million worth of Ether was stolen, and Ethereum split into two separate blockchains. Today Ethereum (ETH) is a result of a hard fork (change to the protocol of a blockchain network) with the theft reversed, while Ethereum Classic continued to exist in its original form.
Even though today Ethereum is widely known and celebrated, it wasn't always the number two digital currency in the world. Before Ethereum, there were many digital coins to hold second place in popularity like Litecoin or Ripple. But since its inception, Ethereum gained over 2,800% in value. The other interesting fact is that, unlike for Bitcoin, there is no real cap for Ether. It can be mined forever, though the number of coins must not exceed 18 mln Ether per year.
Today if you are investing in most of the new tokens out there, you are probably investing in something that was built on the Ethereum platform. Because now more than three-quarters of all ICOs are hosted on the Ethereum blockchain.
The last thing left to ask is, "what is the price of Ethereum?". Well, it is changing as we speak.
