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Review on Ethereum by Sharron Robertson
Ethereum Coin Review
Ethereum is a blockchain-based platform that uses a cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), to act as a unit of value used in it’s own complete programming languages, Solidity and Ethereum Virtual Machine code (EVM), to empower ‘smart contracts’ or Distributed Applications (dApps).
These dApps can have their own tokens or coins each with independent values and properties. All of this is designed to ensure decentralization, security and fairness
Ethereum also faces the same concerns as Bitcoin over the impact that the cryptoasset has in terms of the energy required for mining, which is the primary means of validating transactions.
However, unlike Bitcoin, the Ethereum development community is guided in a more cohesive direction towards solutions to those problems.
Ethereum’s community acknowledges the problems openly and has been at work conceptualizing solutions that will enable a much more sustainable, scalable version of the platform.
Ethereum development is split among several different Ethereum clients (a client is the means for users to interact with the Ethereum network in different operating environments), with some being developed by private companies such as Parity.
But the main client, go-ethereum, maintained and developed by the Ethereum Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that supports the platform and its development, is the one that sets the standards.
Pros
- Potential to be the platform for next generation distributed apps (dApps)
- Well established development community
- Planned to move to Proof of Stake to reduce energy usage of validation
Cons
- Very large scalability challenge
- History of problems in some high profile smart contracts/dApps
- Many competitors with potential to overtake platform
