Ether is the token of Ethereum, a network based on blockchain technology that serves as the basis for the famous smart contracts. (Illustration: Jovani Perez)

Ether, commonly referred to as ethereum, is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalizationit is therefore one of the digital currencies that arouses the most interest among miners (creators of crypto-currencies).

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain platform that works with the use of its native currency, called ether or ETHso even though people use these names as synonyms, they are different things.

Ether is a token used specifically on the Ethereum blockchain. pay for transactions. This token is responsible for powering almost everything that happens on the network, which can be used by anyone to create and run smart contracts, which are software that runs autonomously and without user intervention. ‘user.

Lo and behold, Ethereum’s growth can be attributed in part to its role as smart contractsbecause through this innovation, it has laid the foundations for the decentralized finance industry, decentralized applications and non-fungible tokens such as NFTs.

The Ethereum platform was created in 2015 by programmer Vitalik Buterinwith the aim of promoting an instrument for decentralized and collaborative applications.

However, among its flaws is its limited scalabilityi.e. it only allows 15 transactions per second, this situation has already put ethereum in check when in December 2017 the CryptoKitties app ‒a game where users could trade digital kittens for speculative purposes‒ led to huge congestion on the platform in which many transactions failed to take place.

According to the Binance portal, the Ethereum digital currency currently has 122.37 million units created.

The price of ethereum

While the debate heats up every day on the convenience or not of its use, Ethereum is trading today at 13:05 (UTC time) at 1666.39 USD, which represents a change of 7.13% compared to the last 24 hours and a change of 0.06% with reference to its value reached in the last hour.

Regarding its popularity in the market, it has maintained the position #2 between digital currencies.

Ethereum and its latest update

After several months of delay and with the fear that it will never happen, finally the September 15, 2022 Ethereum has achieved its long-awaited merger or upgrade to the new 2.0 level with the promise of improving the user experience of this cryptocurrency.

Representation of the Ether cryptocurrency.  (Reuters)
Representation of the Ether cryptocurrency. (Reuters)

This merger concerns combine the Ethereum blockchain with a new separate blockchain known as proof of stake, which It reduces energy consumption of the Ethereum blockchain by 99.9%, according to its own developers, which makes it more “friendly” with the environment while transactions would be cheaper.

its defenders think the merger will give Ethereum a favor over its main rival, Bitcoinas this could increase its use.

In the Proof Stake process, Ether owners lock up set amounts of their cryptocurrency to verify new records on the blockchain, earning new coins on top of their “staked” crypto.

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