The Ethereum Platform

Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It supports a modified version of Nakamoto consensus via transaction-based state transitions. Ether is a cryptocurrency generated by the Ethereum platform and used to compensate mining nodes for computations performed.^[3] Each Ethereum account has an ether balance and ether may be transferred from one account to another.

Ethereum provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.^[4] The virtual machine’s instruction set, in contrast to others like Bitcoin Script, is thought to be Turing-complete. “Gas”, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.^[4]

Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale that took place between July and August 2014.^[4] The system then went live on 30 July 2015, with 72 million coins “premined”. This accounts for about 68 percent of the total circulating supply in 2019.^[5]

In 2016, as a result of the exploitation of a flaw in The DAO project’s smart contract software, and subsequent theft of $50 million worth of ether,^[6] Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains – the new separate version became Ethereum (ETH) with the theft reversed,^[7] and the original continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC).^[8]