Finance:Ethereum

From HandWiki
Short description: Open-source blockchain computing platform
Ethereum
Eth-diamond-rainbow.png
Logo
Original author(s)Vitalik Buterin
Gavin Wood
Initial release30 July 2015; 8 years ago (2015-07-30)
|Discontinued|Stable release}}1.12.2 / 13 August 2023; 8 months ago (2023-08-13)
Development statusActive
Software usedEVM 1 Bytecode
Written inGo, Rust, C#, C++, Java, Python, Nim, TypeScript
Operating systemCross-platform
Platformx86-64, ARM
Available inMultilingual, but primarily English
TypeDistributed computing
LicenseOpen-source licenses
Active hosts~8,600 nodes (6 June 2023)[1]
Websiteethereum.org

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH;[lower-alpha 1] sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization.[2][3] It is open-source software.

Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin.[4] Additional founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin.[5] In 2014, development work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015.[6] Ethereum allows anyone to deploy permanent and immutable decentralized applications onto it, with which users can interact.[7] Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications provide financial instruments that do not directly rely on financial intermediaries like brokerages, exchanges, or banks. This facilitates borrowing against cryptocurrency holdings or lending them out for interest.[8][9] Ethereum also allows users to create and exchange non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are tokens that can be tied to unique digital assets, such as images. Additionally, many other cryptocurrencies utilize the ERC-20 token standard on top of the Ethereum blockchain and have utilized the platform for initial coin offerings.

On 15 September 2022, Ethereum transitioned its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in an upgrade process known as "the Merge". This has cut Ethereum's energy usage by 99%.[10]

History

Founding (2013–2014)

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2015

Ethereum was initially described in late 2013 in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin,[4][11] a programmer and co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, that described a way to build decentralized applications.[12][13] Buterin argued to the Bitcoin Core developers that Bitcoin and blockchain technology could benefit from other applications besides money and that it needed a more robust language for application development[14]:88 that could lead to attaching[clarification needed] real-world assets, such as stocks and property, to the blockchain.[15] In 2013, Buterin briefly worked with eToro CEO Yoni Assia on the Colored Coins project and drafted its white paper outlining additional use cases for blockchain technology.[16] However, after failing to gain agreement on how the project should proceed, he proposed the development of a new platform with a more robust scripting language—a Turing-complete programming language[17]—that would eventually become Ethereum.[14]

Ethereum was announced at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, in January 2014.[18] During the conference, Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio (who financed the project) rented a house in Miami with Buterin at which they could develop a fuller sense of what Ethereum might become.[18] Di Iorio invited friend Joseph Lubin, who invited reporter Morgen Peck, to bear witness.[18] Peck subsequently wrote about the experience in Wired.[19] Six months later the founders met again in Zug, Switzerland, where Buterin told the founders that the project would proceed as a non-profit. Hoskinson left the project at that time and soon after founded IOHK, a blockchain company responsible for Cardano.[18]

Ethereum has an unusually long list of founders.[20] Anthony Di Iorio wrote: "Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin, Myself, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie & Amir Chetrit (the initial 5) in December 2013. Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, & Jeffrey Wilcke were added in early 2014 as founders." Buterin chose the name Ethereum after browsing a list of elements from science fiction on Wikipedia. He stated, "I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen; I suppose it was that [it] sounded nice and it had the word 'ether', referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."[18] Buterin wanted his platform to be the underlying and imperceptible medium for the applications running on top of it.[21]

Development (2014)

Formal development of the software underlying Ethereum began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse).[22] The idea of putting executable smart contracts in the blockchain needed to be specified before it could be implemented in software. This work was done by Gavin Wood, then the chief technology officer, in the Ethereum Yellow Paper that specified the Ethereum Virtual Machine.[23][24] Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was founded. Development was funded by an online public crowd sale from July to August 2014, in which participants bought the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, bitcoin. While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions were also raised about its security and scalability.[12]

Launch and the DAO event (2014–2016)

Several codenamed prototypes of Ethereum were developed over 18 months in 2014 and 2015 by the Ethereum Foundation as part of their proof-of-concept series.[4] "Olympic" was the last prototype and public beta pre-release. The Olympic network gave users a bug bounty of 25,000 ether for stress-testing the Ethereum blockchain. On 30 July 2015, "Frontier" marked the official launch of the Ethereum platform, and Ethereum created its "genesis block".[4][25] The genesis block contained 8,893 transactions allocating various amounts of ether to different addresses, and a block reward of 5 ETH.[citation needed]

Since the initial launch, Ethereum has undergone a number of planned protocol upgrades, which are important changes affecting the underlying functionality and/or incentive structures of the platform.[26][27] Protocol upgrades are accomplished by means of a hard fork.[citation needed]

In 2016, a decentralized autonomous organization called The DAO—a set of smart contracts developed on the platform—raised a record US$150 million in a crowd sale to fund the project.[28] The DAO was exploited in June 2016 when US$50 million of DAO tokens were stolen by an unknown hacker.[29][30] The event sparked a debate in the crypto-community about whether Ethereum should perform a contentious "hard fork" to reappropriate the affected funds.[31] The fork resulted in the network splitting into two blockchains: Ethereum with the theft reversed, and Ethereum Classic which continued on the original chain.[32]

Continued development and milestones (2017–present)

In March 2017, various blockchain startups, research groups, and Fortune 500 companies announced the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) with 30 founding members.[33] By May 2017, the nonprofit organization had 116 enterprise members, including ConsenSys, CME Group, Cornell University's research group, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J. P. Morgan, Cooley LLP, Merck KGaA, DTCC, Deloitte, Accenture, Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, ING, and National Bank of Canada.[34][35] By July 2017, there were over 150 members in the alliance, including MasterCard, Cisco Systems, Sberbank, and Scotiabank.[36]

CryptoKitties and the ERC-721 NFT standard

In 2017, CryptoKitties, the blockchain game and decentralized application (dApp) featuring digital cat artwork as NFTs, was launched on the Ethereum network.[37] In cultivating popularity with users and collectors, it gained notable mainstream media attention providing significant exposure to Ethereum in the process.[38] It was considered the most popular smart contract in use on the network[39] but it also highlighted concerns over Ethereum's scalability due to the game's substantial consumption of network capacity at the time.[40]

In January 2018, a community-driven paper (an EIP, "Ethereum Improvement Proposal") under the leadership of civic hacker and lead author William Entriken was published, called ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard.[41] It introduced ERC-721, the first official NFT standard on Ethereum.[42] This standardization was a milestone for Ethereum in pioneering the foundation of the multi-billion dollar digital collectibles eco-system.[43]

Continued developments

By January 2018, ether was the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, behind bitcoin.[44] (As of 2021), it maintained that relative position.[2][3]

In 2019, Ethereum Foundation employee Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government for presenting at a blockchain conference in North Korea.[45] He would later plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in 2021.[46]

In March 2021, Visa Inc. announced that it began settling stablecoin transactions using Ethereum.[47] In April 2021, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, and MasterCard announced that they were investing US$65 million into ConsenSys, a software development firm that builds Ethereum-related infrastructure.[48]

There were two network upgrades in 2021. The first was "Berlin", implemented on 14 April 2021.[49] The second was "London", which took effect on 5 August.[50] The London upgrade included Ethereum Improvement Proposal ("EIP") 1559, a mechanism for reducing transaction fee volatility. The mechanism causes a portion of the ether paid in transaction fees for each block to be destroyed rather than given to the block proposer, reducing the inflation rate of ether and potentially resulting in periods of deflation.[51]

On 27 August 2021, the blockchain experienced a brief fork that was the result of clients running different incompatible software versions.[52]

Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum enthusiasts gather for a Merge party in San Francisco in 2022.

Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2) was a set of three or more upgrades, also known as "phases", meant to transition the network's consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake, and to scale the network's transaction throughput with execution sharding and an improved EVM architecture.[53]

The switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake on 15 September 2022 has cut Ethereum's energy usage by 99%. However, the impact this has on global energy consumption and climate change may be limited since the computers previously used for mining ether may be used to mine other cryptocurrencies that are energy-intensive.[10]

As of April 2023, 18.2 million ETH ($34.6 billion) was locked in the Ethereum 2.0 staking deposit contract.[54]

Design

Ether

Ether (ETH) is the cryptocurrency generated in accordance with the Ethereum protocol as a reward to validators in a proof-of-stake system for adding blocks to the blockchain. Ether is represented in the state as an unsigned integer associated with each account, this being the account's ETH balance denominated in wei (1018 wei = 1 ether).[55] At the end of each epoch, new ETH is generated by the addition of protocol-specified amounts to the balances of all validators for that epoch, with the block proposers receiving the largest portion. Additionally, ether is the only currency accepted by the protocol as payment for the transaction fee. The transaction fee is composed of two parts: the base fee and the tip. The base fee is "burned" (deleted from existence) and the tip goes to the block proposer. The validator reward together with the tips provide the incentive to validators to keep the blockchain growing (i.e. to keep processing new transactions). Therefore, ETH is fundamental to the operation of the network. Ether may be "sent" from one account to another via a transaction, which simply entails subtracting the amount to be sent from the sender's balance and adding the same amount to the recipient's balance.[56]

Ether is often erroneously referred to as "Ethereum".[57]

Accounts

There are two types of accounts on Ethereum: user accounts (also known as externally-owned accounts), and contract accounts. Both types have an ETH balance, may transfer ETH to any account, may execute the code of another contract, or create a new contract, and are identified on the blockchain and in the state by an account address.[58]

Contracts are the only type of account that has associated bytecode and storage (to store contract specific state). The code of a contract is evaluated when a transaction is sent to it. The code of the contract may read user specified data from the transaction, and may have a return value. In addition to control flow statements, the bytecode may include instructions to send ETH, read from and write to the contract's storage, create temporary storage (memory) that vanishes at the end of code evaluation, perform arithmetic and hashing operations, send transactions to other contracts (thus executing their code), create new contracts, and query information about the current transaction or the blockchain.[59]

Addresses

Ethereum addresses are composed of the prefix "0x" (a common identifier for hexadecimal) concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so-called secp256k1). In hexadecimal, two digits represent a byte, and so addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits after the "0x", e.g. 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however, they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce.[24]

Virtual machine

The number of daily confirmed Ethereum transactions as of April 2021

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the runtime environment for transaction execution in Ethereum. The EVM is a stack based virtual machine with an instruction set specifically designed for Ethereum. The instruction set includes, among other things, stack operations, memory operations, and operations to inspect the current execution context, such as remaining gas, information about the current block, and the current transaction. The EVM is designed to be deterministic on a wide variety of hardware and operating systems, so that given a pre-transaction state and a transaction, each node produces the same post-transaction state, thereby enabling network consensus. The formal definition of the EVM is specified in the Ethereum Yellow Paper.[24][60] EVMs have been implemented in C++, C#, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Rust, Elixir, Erlang, and soon[when?] WebAssembly.[citation needed]

Gas

Gas is a unit of account within the EVM used in the calculation of the transaction fee, which is the amount of ETH a transaction's sender must pay to the network to have the transaction included in the blockchain. Each type of operation which may be performed by the EVM is hardcoded with a certain gas cost, which is intended to be roughly proportional to the monetary value of the resources (e.g. computation and storage) a node must expend or dedicate to perform that operation.[citation needed]

When a sender is creating a transaction, the sender must specify a gas limit and gas price. The gas limit is the maximum amount of gas the sender is willing to use in the transaction, and the gas price is the amount of ETH the sender wishes to pay to the network per unit of gas used. A transaction may only be included in the blockchain at a block slot that has a base gas price less than or equal to the transaction's gas price. The portion of the gas price that is in excess of the base gas price is known as the tip and goes to the block proposer; the higher the tip, the more incentive a block proposer has to include the transaction in their block, and thus the quicker the transaction will be included in the blockchain. The sender buys the full amount of gas (i.e. their ETH balance is debited the amount: gas limit × gas price) up-front, at the start of the execution of the transaction, and is refunded at the end for any unused gas. If at any point the transaction does not have enough gas to perform the next operation, the transaction is reverted but the sender is still only refunded for the unused gas. In user interfaces, gas prices are typically denominated in gigawei (Gwei), a subunit of ETH equal to 10−9 ETH.[61]

Applications

The EVM's instruction set is Turing-complete.[24] Popular uses of Ethereum have included the creation of fungible (ERC-20) and non-fungible (ERC-721) tokens with a variety of properties, crowdfunding (e.g. initial coin offerings), decentralized finance, decentralized exchanges, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), games, prediction markets, and gambling.[citation needed]

Contract source code

Ethereum's smart contracts are written in high-level programming languages and then compiled down to EVM bytecode and deployed to the Ethereum blockchain. They can be written in Solidity (a language library with similarities to C and JavaScript), Serpent (similar to Python, but deprecated), Yul (an intermediate language that can compile to various different backends—EVM 1.0, EVM 1.5, and eWASM are planned), LLL (a low-level Lisp-like language), and Mutan (Go-based, but deprecated), and Vyper (a strongly-typed Python-derived decidable language).[citation needed] Source code and compiler information are usually published along with the launch of the contract so that users can see the code and verify that it compiles to the bytecode that is on-chain.[citation needed]

One issue related to using smart contracts on a public blockchain is that bugs, including security holes, are visible to all but cannot be fixed quickly.[62] One example of this is the 2016 attack on The DAO, which could not be quickly stopped or reversed.[29]

ERC-20 tokens

The ERC-20 (Ethereum Request-for-Comments #20) Token Standard allows for fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The standard, proposed by Fabian Vogelsteller in November 2015, implements an API for tokens within smart contracts. The standard provides functions that include the transfer of tokens from one account to another, getting the current token balance of an account, and getting the total supply of the token available on the network. Smart contracts that correctly implement ERC-20 processes are called ERC-20 Token Contracts, and they keep track of created tokens on Ethereum. Numerous cryptocurrencies have launched as ERC-20 tokens and have been distributed through initial coin offerings.[63]

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

Main page: Finance:Non-fungible token

Ethereum also allows for the creation of unique and indivisible tokens, called non-fungible tokens (NFTs).[64] Since tokens of this type are unique, they have been used to represent such things as collectibles, digital art, sports memorabilia, virtual real estate, and items within games.[65] ERC-721 is the first official NFT standard for Ethereum and was followed up by ERC-1155 which introduced semi-fungibility, both are widely used,[66] though some fully fungible tokens using ERC-20 have been used for NFTs such as CryptoPunks.[67]

The first NFT project, Etheria, a 3D map of tradable and customizable hexagonal tiles, was deployed to the network in October 2015 and demonstrated live at DEVCON1 in November of that year.[68] In 2021, Christie's sold a digital image with an NFT by Beeple for US$69.3 million, making him the third-most-valuable living artist in terms of auction prices at the time, although observers have noted that both the buyer and seller had a vested interest in driving demand for the artist's work.[69][70]

Decentralized finance

The web interface to Compound Finance's decentralized application where users can lend and borrow cryptocurrencies for interest
Main page: Finance:Decentralized finance

Decentralized finance (DeFi) offers traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies' and governments' control, such as money market funds which let users earn interest.[71] DeFi applications are typically accessed through a Web3-enabled browser extension or application, such as MetaMask, which allows users to directly interact with the Ethereum blockchain through a website.[72] Many of these DApps can connect and work together to create complex financial services.[73]

Examples of DeFi platforms include MakerDAO and Compound.[74] Uniswap, a decentralized exchange for tokens on Ethereum grew from US$20 million in liquidity to US$2.9 billion in 2020.[75] As of October 2020, over US$11 billion was invested in various DeFi protocols.[76] Additionally, through a process called "wrapping", certain DeFi protocols allow synthetic versions of various assets (such as bitcoin, gold, and oil) to be tradeable on Ethereum and also compatible with all of Ethereum's major wallets and applications.[76]

Enterprise software

Ethereum-based software and networks, independent from the public Ethereum chain, are being tested by enterprise software companies.[77] Interested parties include Microsoft, IBM, JPMorgan Chase,[56] Deloitte, R3, and Innovate UK (cross-border payments prototype).[78] Barclays, UBS, Credit Suisse, Amazon, Visa, and other companies are also experimenting with Ethereum.[79][80]

Permissioned ledgers

Ethereum-based permissioned blockchain variants are used and being investigated for various projects:

  • In 2017, JPMorgan Chase proposed developing JPM Coin on a permissioned-variant of Ethereum blockchain dubbed "Quorum".[81] It is "designed to toe the line between private and public in the realm of shuffling derivatives and payments. The idea is to satisfy regulators who need seamless access to financial goings-on while protecting the privacy of parties that don't wish to reveal their identities nor the details of their transactions to the general public."[82]

Performance

(As of January 2016), the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second; this did not change after the move to proof-of-stake. In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second. This has led some to question the scalability of Ethereum.[83]

A proposal to partition global state and computation into shard chains was presented at Ethereum's Devcon 3 in November 2017.[84] If implemented, each node in the network would only have to store and validate a subset of the network.

Ethereum's blockchain uses a Merkle-Patricia Trie to store account state in each block.[85] The trie allows for storage savings, set membership proofs (called "Merkle proofs"), and light client synchronization. The network has faced congestion problems, such as in 2017 in relation to CryptoKitties.[86]

Regulation

In the United States , the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act would treat Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies as commodities, which could then be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).[87][88]

Notes

  1. Cryptocurrency do not have a formal ISO 4217 alpha-3 code. "ETH" is informal only

References

  1. "Clients". 6 June 2023. https://ethernodes.org/. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 Szalay, Eva; Venkataramakrishnan, Siddharth (28 May 2021). "What are cryptocurrencies and stablecoins and how do they work?". Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/424b29c4-07bf-4612-b7d6-76aecf8e1528. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 Vigna, Paul (3 June 2021). "DeFi Is Helping to Fuel the Crypto Market Boom—and Its Recent Volatility". The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/defi-is-helping-to-fuel-the-crypto-market-boomand-its-recent-volatility-11622712602. 
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Tapscott & Tapscott 2016, pp. 87.
  5. Paumgarten, Nick (15 October 2018). "The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust". The New Yorker. https://newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/the-prophets-of-cryptocurrency-survey-the-boom-and-bust. Retrieved 7 December 2021. 
  6. Foundation, Ethereum (30 July 2015). "Ethereum Launches". https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/07/30/ethereum-launches/. 
  7. Popper, Nathaniel (19 June 2017). "Move Over, Bitcoin. Ether Is the Digital Currency of the Moment. (Published 2017)". https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/business/dealbook/ethereum-bitcoin-digital-currency.html. 
  8. Vigna, Paul (3 May 2021). "Ethereum Is Booming in the NFT Frenzy—So Is Network Congestion". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ethereum-is-booming-in-the-nft-frenzyso-is-network-congestion-11620050853. 
  9. "There are two very real reasons Ethereum is taking off". Fortune. 6 May 2021. https://fortune.com/2021/05/06/ethereum-price-ether-predictions-why-it-is-rising-usd-bitcoin. 
  10. 10.0 10.1 Clark, Aaron (6 December 2022). "Ethereum's Energy Revamp Is No Guarantee of Global Climate Gains". Bloomberg.com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-06/ethereum-cut-its-energy-use-99-but-climate-gains-may-be-curbed. 
  11. "White Paper· ethereum/wiki Wiki · GitHub". https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper. 
  12. 12.0 12.1 Finley, Klint (27 January 2014). "Out in the Open: Teenage Hacker Transforms Web into One Giant Bitcoin Network". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2014/01/ethereum/. Retrieved 21 March 2016. 
  13. Schneider, Nathan (7 April 2014). "Code your own utopia: Meet Ethereum, bitcoin's most ambitious successor". Al Jazeera. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/7/code-your-own-utopiameetethereumbitcoinasmostambitioussuccessor.html. 
  14. 14.0 14.1 Tapscott, Don; Tapscott, Alex (2016). The Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. Portfolio. ISBN 978-0670069972. 
  15. Russo, Camila (14 July 2020). The infinite machine : how an army of crypto-hackers is building the next internet with Ethereum (First ed.). New York, NY: Harper Business. pp. 40–44. ISBN 9780062886149. OCLC 1117469014. 
  16. Russo 2020, pp. 44.
  17. Tapscott & Tapscott 2016, pp. 278.
  18. 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 Paumgarten, Nick (22 October 2018). "The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust". The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/the-prophets-of-cryptocurrency-survey-the-boom-and-bust. 
  19. "The Uncanny Mind That Built Ethereum". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/2016/06/the-uncanny-mind-that-built-ethereum/. 
  20. Jain, Aman (17 August 2021). "Founders' Fork: The Ethereum Architects Now Locked in Battle". Entrepreneur. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/380431. 
  21. Russo 2020, pp. 56.
  22. "Company Overview of Ethereum Switzerland GmbH". Bloomberg. 20 August 2016. https://www.bloomberg.com/Research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=309484729. "The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Baar, Switzerland." 
  23. Dannen, Chris (16 March 2017). Introducing Ethereum and Solidity: Foundations of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Programming for Beginners. Apress. p. 30. ISBN 978-1484225356. https://books.google.com/books?id=roVkDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA30. Retrieved 12 November 2018. 
  24. 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 Wood, Gavin (3 February 2018). "Ethereum: A Secure Decentralized Generalised Transaction Ledger (EIP-150)". http://yellowpaper.io. 
  25. Vigna, Paul (31 July 2015). "BitBeat: Ethereum Opens Its 'Frontier' for Business". The Wall Street Journal. https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/07/31/bitbeat-ethereum-opens-its-frontier-for-business/. 
  26. Gupta, Vinay (3 March 2015). "The Ethereum Launch Process". Ethereum Foundation. https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/03/03/ethereum-launch-process/. 
  27. Bashir, Imran (2020). Mastering Blockchain – Third Edition : a deep dive into distributed ledgers, consensus protocols,... smart contracts, dapps, cryptocurrencies, ethereum. [S.l.]: Packt Publishing Limited. pp. 312. ISBN 978-1839213199. 
  28. Vigna, Paul (16 May 2016). "Chiefless Company Rakes in More than $100 Million". The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chiefless-company-rakes-in-more-than-100-million-1463399393. 
  29. 29.0 29.1 Popper, Nathaniel (18 June 2016). "Hacker May Have Taken $50 Million From Cybercurrency Project". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/18/business/dealbook/hacker-may-have-removed-more-than-50-million-from-experimental-cybercurrency-project.html. 
  30. Price, Rob (17 June 2016). "Digital Currency Ethereum is Cratering Amid Claims of a $50 Million Hack". http://uk.businessinsider.com/dao-hacked-ethereum-crashing-in-value-tens-of-millions-allegedly-stolen-2016-6. 
  31. Peck, Morgan (19 July 2016). ""Hard Fork" Coming to Restore Ethereum Funds to Investors of Hacked DAO". IEEE. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/hacked-blockchain-fund-the-dao-chooses-a-hard-fork-to-redistribute-funds. 
  32. Leising, Matthew (13 June 2017). "The Ether Thief". https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-the-ether-thief/. 
  33. Popper, Nathaniel (27 February 2017). "Business Giants to Announce Creation of a Computing System Based on Ethereum". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/business/dealbook/ethereum-alliance-business-banking-security.html. 
  34. Peck, Morgan (2 March 2017). "Corporate Titans Unite to Build an Enterprise Version of the Ethereum Blockchain". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/enterprise-ethereum-alliance-launches. 
  35. "Enterprise Ethereum Alliance expands dramatically announcing 86 new members" (PDF) (Press release). Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). 19 May 2017. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 June 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
  36. "The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Just Got A Whole Lot Stronger". 19 July 2017. https://www.inc.com/brian-d-evans/the-enterprise-ethereum-alliance-just-got-a-whole-.html. 
  37. Bamakan, Seyed Mojtaba Hosseini; Nezhadsistani, Nasim; Bodaghi, Omid; Qu, Qiang (2022-02-09). "Patents and intellectual property assets as non-fungible tokens; key technologies and challenges". Scientific Reports 12 (1): 2178. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-05920-6. ISSN 2045-2322. PMID 35140251. Bibcode2022NatSR..12.2178B. 
  38. Tepper, Fitz (2017-12-03). "People have spent over $1M buying virtual cats on the Ethereum blockchain" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/03/people-have-spent-over-1m-buying-virtual-cats-on-the-ethereum-blockchain/. 
  39. Shen, Lucinda (8 January 2018). "Ethereum Regains Title as Second Most Valuable Cryptocurrency Behind Bitcoin". Fortune (Fortune Media IP Limited). https://fortune.com/2018/01/08/ethereum-price-ripple-price-bitcoin-xrp/. 
  40. Ransom, Jan (2 December 2019). "He Gave a Cryptocurrency Talk in North Korea. The U.S. Arrested Him.". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/nyregion/north-korea-virgil-griffin-cyptocurrency-arrest.html. 
  41. "Cryptocurrency expert pleads guilty to conspiring to help North Korea dodge sanctions". Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/griffith-korea-cryptocurrency-plea/2021/09/27/2da04ad2-1fc6-11ec-b3d6-8cdebe60d3e2_story.html. 
  42. Hackett, Robert (29 March 2021). "That settles it: Visa is making life way easier for crypto businesses". Fortune. https://fortune.com/2021/03/29/visa-crypto-business/. 
  43. Morris, David Z. (13 April 2021). "Ethereum: Mastercard, UBS, and J.P. Morgan pour $65 million into crypto startup studio Consensys". Fortune. https://fortune.com/2021/04/13/ethereum-crypto-google-mastercard-ubs-jp-morgan-funding/. 
  44. "Ether rallies to all-time high above $2,200 ahead of Coinbase listing, Berlin hard fork". 13 April 2021. https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/ether-price-all-time-high-coinbase-listing-berlin-hard-fork-2021-4-1030300075. 
  45. Sigalos, MacKenzie (5 August 2021). "Ethereum just activated its 'London' hard fork, and it's a really big deal". CNBC. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ethereum-just-activated-its-london-hard-fork-and-its-a-really-big-deal/ar-AAMYsaT. 
  46. "Crypto Coin Outperforming Bitcoin Is About to See Supply Reduced". 7 March 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-07/crypto-coin-outperforming-bitcoin-is-about-to-see-supply-reduced. 
  47. Mehrotra, Kartikay (28 August 2021). "Most Used Blockchain Averts Crisis After Software Flaw Is Fixed". Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/most-used-blockchain-averts-crisis-after-software-flaw-is-fixed?srnd=technology-vp. 
  48. "The Roadmap to Serenity aka #Ethereum 2.0 Upgrades". 16 May 2019. https://consensys.net/blog/blockchain-explained/the-roadmap-to-serenity-2/. 
  49. "Despite Fears Of Huge Supply Unlock, Ethereum's New Upgrade Propels It To New Highs". 15 Apr 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeorshimron/2023/04/15/despite-fears-of-huge-supply-unlock-ethereums-new-upgrade-propels-it-to-new-highs/. 
  50. "What Is a Wei?". https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wei.asp. 
  51. 56.0 56.1 Popper, Nathaniel (27 March 2016). "Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin's". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/business/dealbook/ethereum-a-virtual-currency-enables-transactions-that-rival-bitcoins.html. 
  52. Chavez-Dreyfuss, Gertrude (5 February 2021). "Ether seeks to escape bitcoin's shadow with CME futures launch". https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currency-ethereum/ether-seeks-to-escape-bitcoins-shadow-with-cme-futures-launch-idUKKBN2A52BC. 
  53. "Ethereum Upgrade Adds to Crypto Mania Sparked by Bitcoin's Surge". Bloomberg.com. 25 November 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-25/ethereum-upgrade-adds-to-crypto-mania-sparked-by-bitcoin-s-surge. 
  54. "Introduction to Smart Contracts". https://docs.soliditylang.org/en/v0.4.24/introduction-to-smart-contracts.html. 
  55. Triantafyllidis, Nikolaos Petros (19 February 2016). Developing an Ethereum Blockchain Application (Report). University of Amsterdam. p. 20. 
  56. de Azevedo Sousa, José Eduardo (2020). "An analysis of the fees and pending time correlation in Ethereum". International Journal of Network Management (e2113). http://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/lanoms/lanoms2019/196411_1.pdf. Retrieved 14 October 2020. 
  57. Peck, M. (28 May 2016). "Ethereum's $150-Million Blockchain-Powered Fund Opens Just as Researchers Call For a Halt". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/ethereums-150-million-dollar-dao-opens-for-business-just-as-researchers-call-for-a-moratorium. 
  58. Castillo, Michael del. "Ethereum's First ICO Blazes Trail To A World Without Bosses". https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/07/28/ethereums-first-ico-blazes-trail-to-a-world-without-bosses/?sh=4d6c90035a18. 
  59. Volpicelli, Gian (24 February 2021). "The bitcoin elite are spending millions on collectable memes". Wired UK. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/crypto-art-nft. Retrieved 25 February 2021. 
  60. Browne, Ryan (25 February 2021). "Why people are buying crypto art and sports memorabilia for thousands of dollars". https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/25/nfts-why-digital-art-and-sports-collectibles-are-suddenly-so-popular.html. 
  61. "The Cult of CryptoPunks". 8 April 2021. https://social.techcrunch.com/2021/04/08/the-cult-of-cryptopunks/. 
  62. Gerlis, Melanie (18 February 2021). "Christie's gets digital with the art world's non-fungible craze". Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/d7523a73-8aa3-40eb-8b3d-bf27cd2494a0. 
  63. Ravenscraft, Eric (12 March 2022). "NFTs Don't Work the Way You Might Think They Do". Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-dont-work-the-way-you-think-they-do/. 
  64. Kauflin, Jeff. "Why Everyone in Crypto Is Talking About DeFi". https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2019/04/26/why-everyone-in-crypto-is-talking-about-defi/. 
  65. "MetaMask's Blockchain Mobile App Opens Doors For Next-Level Web". 2 September 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-02/metamask-s-blockchain-mobile-app-opens-doors-for-next-level-web. 
  66. "Why 'DeFi' Utopia Would Be Finance Without Financiers: QuickTake". Bloomberg. 26 August 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-26/why-defi-utopia-would-be-finance-without-financiers-quicktake. 
  67. "Crypto soars again as traders embrace 'DeFi' and 'yield farming'—but some see echoes of the 2017 bubble". Fortune. 25 August 2020. https://fortune.com/2020/08/25/crypto-defi-yield-farming-bitcoin/. 
  68. Konrad, Alex. "These Young Investors Are Still Betting Big On Crypto – And Are Taking Harvard And Stanford Along For The Ride". Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/10/18/these-young-investors-betting-big-on-crypto-are-taking-harvard-and-stanford-along-for-the-ride/#5642b5e04212. 
  69. 76.0 76.1 Ehrlich, Steven. "Leading 'Privacy Coin' Zcash Poised For Growth Following Placement On Ethereum". https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2020/10/29/leading-privacy-coin-zcash-poised-for-growth-following-placement-on-ethereum. 
  70. "Big Business Giants From Microsoft to J.P. Morgan Are Getting Behind Ethereum". Fortune. http://fortune.com/2017/02/28/ethereum-jpmorgan-microsoft-alliance/. 
  71. "Settlement using blockchain to Automate Foreign Exchange in a Regulated environment (SAFER)". http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=720735. 
  72. Castillo, Michael del. "Blockchain 50". https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/19/blockchain-50/?sh=219e535d7553. 
  73. "Beyond Bitcoin: These Cryptocurrencies Are Doing Even Better". 3 December 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/ethereum-xet-xrp-litecoin-xlc-cryptocurrency-alternative-to-bitcoin-btc. 
  74. "JP Morgan's Quorum blockchain powers new correspondent banking network " Banking Technology". 18 October 2017. http://www.bankingtech.com/1037032/jp-morgans-quorum-blockchain-powers-new-correspondent-banking-network/. 
  75. Hackett, Robert (4 October 2016). "Why J.P. Morgan Chase Is Building a Blockchain on Ethereum". Fortune. http://fortune.com/2016/10/04/jp-morgan-chase-blockchain-ethereum-quorum/. 
  76. Murphy, Hannah (19 October 2018). "The rise and fall of Ethereum". Financial Times (London: The Financial Times Ltd). https://www.ft.com/content/a8d2c280-d2b6-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5. 
  77. Galeon, Dom. "Ethereum's Co-Founder Just Unveiled His Plan for the Future of Cryptocurrency". https://futurism.com/ethereums-co-founder-just-unveiled-his-plan-for-the-future-of-cryptocurrency/. 
  78. Vitalik Buterin. "Merkling in Ethereum". https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/11/15/merkling-in-ethereum. 
  79. Joon Ian Wong (4 December 2017). "The Ethereum network is getting jammed up because people are rushing to buy cartoon cats on its blockchain". https://qz.com/1145833/cryptokitties-is-causing-ethereum-network-congestion/. 
  80. "Customer Advisory: Understand the Risks of Virtual Currency Trading". Commodity Futures Trading Commission. https://www.cftc.gov/LearnAndProtect/AdvisoriesAndArticles/understand_risks_of_virtual_currency.html#:~:text=Bitcoin%20is%20a%20Commodity&text=While%20its%20regulatory%20oversight%20authority,a%20commodity%20in%20interstate%20commerce. 
  81. "Bitcoin Basics". Commodity Futures Trading Commission. December 2019. https://www.cftc.gov/sites/default/files/2019-12/oceo_bitcoinbasics0218.pdf. 

External links