Ethereum is the #2 most widely used cryptocurrency in the world
Ethereum is a digital platform that adopts blockchain technology and expands its use to a wide variety of applications, while ether is its native cryptocurrency. In the world of digital finance it is common for cryptocurrency to be referred to as the network, although in reality they are not the same thing.
The ethereum platform, founded in 2015 by programmer Vitalik Buterin, sought to be a tool for decentralized and collaborative applications on which smart contracts (dAPPs) can be made.
However, among its shortcomings is its limited scalability, that is, it only allows to make 15 transactions per second, this situation already put ethereum in check when in December 2017 the CryptoKitties application – a game where users could exchange digital kitties for speculative purposes – led the platform to a great congestion in which many transactions were not carried out. Version 2.0 is currently being worked on to make improvements.
Like bitcoin, ether’s price skyrocketed in a short period of time. In January 2016, ether was trading around one dollar and currently has an all-time high of 4891.7 units. It hasn’t been spared from major downturns either.
Ethereum’s share price for today at 13:05 hours (UTC time) is $1621.64, meaning that the cryptocurrency reported a change of -0.87% in the last 24 hours.
On the other hand, it recorded a -0.35% change from its value an hour ago. In terms of its popularity, it ranks #2.
Ethereum 2.0: the keys
After several months of delay and with the fear that it would never happen anymore, finally on September 15, 2022 Ethereum carried out its long-awaited merge or upgrade to the new 2.0 level with the promise of improving the user experience of this cryptocurrency.
“The Merge”, English for “The Merger”, is a transformation in the way Ethereum processes transactions and how new Ether tokens are created.
This merger is about combining the Ethereum blockchain with a new separate blockchain known as proof-of-stake, which reduces the energy consumption of the Ethereum blockchain by 99.9%, according to its own developers, making it more “friendly” to the environment while transactions would be cheaper.
Proponents believe the merger will make Ethereum favored over top rival Bitcoin, as it could increase its use.
In the Proof Stake process Ether owners will block set amounts of their cryptocurrencies to verify new records on the blockchain, gaining new coins in addition to their “participated” cryptocurrency.