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Ethereum is a decentralized Web 3.0 platform for peer-to-peer creation and publication of smart contracts created in a Turing-complete programming language.
In order to run on the peer-to-peer network, Ethereum contracts "pay" for the use of its computational power through a unit of account, called Ether, which therefore acts as both cryptocurrency and fuel. In other words, unlike many other cryptocurrencies, Ethereum is not just a network for exchanging monetary value, but a network for running Ethereum-based contracts. These contracts can be safely used to perform a large number of operations: election systems, domain name registration, financial markets, crowdfunding platforms, intellectual property, etc.
The platform was first mentioned by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine, of which he himself is co-founder with Joseph Lubin, in early 2013. It was subsequently conceptualized in Buterin's own White Paper and formalized by Gavin Wood in the so-called Yellow Paper, at the beginning of 2014. The release of the first "live" version of the platform (the so-called Frontier version) took place on 30 July 2015.
Ethereum is part of a group of so-called "next generation" (or "2.0") blockchain platforms.
As with other cryptocurrencies, the validity of each Ether is guaranteed by a blockchain, which is an ever-growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked together and protected by cryptography. By definition, the blockchain itself is resistant to data modification. It is an open, distributed, accounting LEDGER that records transactions between two parties in an efficient and permanently verifiable manner.
A cryptocurrency wallet stores public and private "keys" or "addresses" that can be used to receive or spend Ether.
Private (deterministic) keys can be generated using the Bitcoin protocol called BIT32, starting from a sequence of 12 or 18 words that is stored in the Bitcoin wallet, from which the level 0 master private key is obtained and, to go down, those of the following levels. For each private key, the Bitcoin address associated with its level is generated.
However, in Ethereum, this procedure is not required, as it cannot work in a UTXO scheme [unclear]: through the private key it is possible to write to the blockchain, effectively concluding an Ether transaction.
To route the Ether to an account, you need to have the computed hash of its public key, which is computed with the Keccak-256 encryption algorithm. Ether accounts are not nominative, they do not uniquely identify the beneficiary, but rather one or more specific addresses.
Ether is a critical component to the functioning of Ethereum, because it provides a ledger for transactions. It is used to pay for gas, a calculation unit for transactions and other state transitions. It is indicated with the ETH transaction icon (ticker symbol) and with the Greek capital letter ? with the currency symbol, so that it can be traded in electronic markets denominated in cryptocurrencies, or to pay transaction fees and additional services to the Ethereum network .
Development
Development of Ethereum began in December 2013, and the first versions of the Go language and C ++ language software were released in early February 2014. Since then, several successive versions have been published, which have included the development of three programming languages ??specially created for writing smart contracts: Serpent (inspired by the Python language), Mutan (inspired by the Go language) and LLL (inspired by the language of Lisp programming).
To fund the development work, Ethereum launched a public pre-sale offering of Ether. The public offering lasted 42 days and totaled the collection of 31 591 Bitcoins, equal (at the exchange rate of 2 September 2014) to approximately 18.4 million US dollars, or 60 102 216 ETH.
Proof of Concept number 5 was released on GitHub on July 22, 2014, at the same time as the pre-sale launch of Ether, and included several changes from the previous Proof of Concept. For the first time the two clients, one written in C ++ and another in Go, have begun to interact perfectly and work on the same Blockchain. In August 2014, a client written in Python was added to the list of available platforms.
With Proof of Concept number 7, Solidity was launched, a hybrid programming language, inspired by JavaScript / C ++, containing numerous syntactic enrichments in order to be compatible and versatile for the compilation of smart contracts on Ethereum. Block times have been reduced from 60 seconds to 12 seconds, using a new GHOST-based protocol.
In 2015, Ethereum began using pre-sale fundraising to expand its operations, starting with the foundation based in Zug, Switzerland and with development teams in London, Berlin and Amsterdam. The beta version with working network and in which mining gives rewards in real Ether, called Frontier, was released on July 30, 2015 [14]. In addition, a bug research program has been launched that is open to the developer community.
Ethereum is an open source project, and any developer can contribute to the source code.
Ethereum's currency unit of account is called Ether and is abbreviated to the symbol ETH. Ether is divided into subunits of account called finney, szabo, shannon, babbage, lovelace, and wei, respectively in honor of Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and Wei Dai, more or less known personalities. in the world of cryptography, programming and cryptocurrencies.
insights -> https://ethereum.org/it/whitepaper/
