Ethereum’s Rise To Prominence: How It Has Changed The Crypto Landscape

Do you know how Ethereum has managed to change the Crypto Landscape? What are the factors contributing to its revolutionizing crypto landscape? Let’s briefly analyze this revolution and its impact on the future!

New cryptocurrencies are entering the market every day. Some are scams, and some are legit projects with lofty but achievable goals. One of those legitimate projects that have captured the attention of every crypto enthusiast in recent years is Ethereum. 

Ethereum was designed by a young man named Vitalik Buterin in 2014, and since then, it has come a long way. 

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Today, it’s the second biggest crypto in the market (in terms of market share). This development has opened up an entirely new world for cryptocurrency. But what is Ethereum (ETH), and what makes it different from Bitcoin? 

This article will discuss Ethereum’s ascension to prominence and how it has altered the entire crypto landscape.

Ethereum’s Origin 

The idea behind Ethereum was born in October 2013, when Vitalik Buterin had the idea of creating a blockchain that could be used for more than just money. 

At the time, he and his co-founder Mihai Alise were writing for Bitcoin Magazine, and Buterin thought their readers would be interested in something more than just financial transactions. And that’s how Ethereum was born!

Ethereum is based on blockchain technology and can be used as a platform for applications that require smart contracts. It means that people can use it to create decentralized applications (DApps) that run on smart contracts. 

Please note that the Ethereum platform was designed to allow users to easily create their tokens (called ERC20 tokens), which can then be traded on exchanges like stocks or commodities. The initial coin offering (ICO) boom was powered by Ethereum, and it continues to be a popular platform for launching new cryptocurrencies and ICOs today.

The Birth of Smart Contracts

One of the main problems with Bitcoin at the time was how slow it was to process transactions. Each transaction took about 10 minutes to be confirmed by miners on its virtual ledger, which meant that if you sent money to someone or received money from someone, you could only be sure that it had gone through around 10 minutes later. 

This made it very difficult to use Bitcoin as a payment method because people wanted to know whether their transactions had been processed or not. 

Buterin wanted to use Ethereum’s smart contracts feature to solve this problem by allowing people to make instant payments without waiting for confirmations. Therefore, he worked with his engineering team and created an innovative contract feature.

After the massive success of smart contracts, in 2017, Vitalik Buterin announced the transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), which allowed for faster transactions on the network while reducing energy consumption by 99%. It resulted in an increase in popularity for Ethereum as more people began using it to launch their DApps and smart contracts.

In 2018, Ethereum gained further popularity when several companies decided to switch from Bitcoin to Ether as their primary cryptocurrency due to its lower transaction fees and faster processing times than Bitcoin’s blockchain network.

The ERC20 Token Standard

The next big thing that changed the crypto market was ERC20 Token Standard.  The standard was proposed in late 2015 by Ethereum developer Fabian Vogelsteller and soon gained widespread support amongst the Ethereum development community. 

Basically, the ERC20 Token Standard is a technical standard for implementing tokens on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. ERC20 defines a standard list of rules that an Ethereum token has to implement, providing a basic set of functions that allow tokens to be transferred between users and managed by smart contracts.

This standard was created for 2 main reasons:

  • To make it easier for developers to create their own tokens with just a few lines of code;
  • To make it easier for users to interact with different tokens using a single interface.

Ethereum; Threat to Bitcoin?

Ethereum, with its fast and open-source work, is a threat to bitcoin’s existence. The Ethereum network can process transactions much faster than Bitcoin, which means it can scale to a higher volume of transactions.

Also, ethereum has a much more active development team and community than Bitcoin. It means Ethereum is constantly improving and innovating, whereas Bitcoin is stuck in the past, with its original developers leaving the project years ago.

The Ethereum blockchain is designed to be more flexible than the Bitcoin blockchain. In addition, it allows for more uses of smart contracts and decentralized apps on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Ethereum’s Most Popular Apps

If you want to get started with Ethereum, here are some of the most popular apps available right now:

Coinbase: Coinbase is a popular cryptocurrency exchange and trading platform for Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. The app allows you to securely buy, sell, and store coins on mobile devices and desktops. 

Etherscan: Etherscan provides an easy way to view their transaction history, wallet balances, token holdings, and more. It also includes a search function to find specific addresses or transactions.

What Does the Future Hold for Ethereum?

Ethereum has an extremely bright future ahead of it. It’s the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap, behind only Bitcoin of the present era. It’s also one of the most used platforms for smart contracts and decentralized apps (DApps). 

However, Ethereum has to be careful in the future as Scalability is one of the biggest problems facing blockchain technology today. As more people use blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are more outstanding transaction fees and longer processing times, which can negatively impact its reputation.

The Final Word

To conclude, Ethereum is one of the most important cryptocurrencies out there. It allows numerous applications to be built and will enable them to be implemented in several ways that were not previously possible. 

In addition, with its unique features and growing profile, Ethereum is foolproof to revolutionize cryptocurrency. Keep your eye on it in the coming years—it’s sure to be a game-changer.