Review on Ethereum by Jerry Siegel
Ethereum (ETH)
If we were to determine what is Ethereum according to the project official site, then it's a global, open-source platform for dApps.
As we can see from this official description, in order to understand Ethereum we have to first understand what is smart-contracts and what is dApps.
To put it simply, smart-contract is just a peice of code. You can create the peice of code on Ethereum and deploy it on their decetralized network (as they put it). But what makes this peice of code so special? One answer - decentralization.
On other (centralized) app platforms, like AppStore or Google Play, all of the code isn't really belong to the app owners, because those platforms can easily shut down and remove your app.
On Ethereum there's no apps, there's dApps (decetralized Apps). It means that all of dApps are running permisionlessly (meaning permission to run it is not required). It could be a social network (like Hive), could be predicition market (like Augur), could be a blockchain-based game (like CryptoKitties).
No one can tell you for sure, that this technology will succeed on a global scale. Ethereum has several inside and outside issues. Main inside issue - network carrying capacity (speed of transactions). Main outside issue - government's don't like something they can't control.
All in all, well it's all a gamble, really. To put it in completely different perspective - it's all just a fugazi. Tokens have real value only if the platform is giving something useful to the people. As of useless tokens - you can basically say it's just numbers on your screen.
People sell non-existent things (i.e. ERC20 tokens) to other people and basically exchange it for government-backed money. But what gives this tokens real value? That's right - decentralization... or rather socially agreed connotation people attach to it. That's the new era of internet money that we live in today. And it's pretty exciting to see where this will take us.
Pros
- Much more real use-cases than Bitcoin
- Way faster than Bitcoin (but not really fast)
Cons
- ETH is not money
- Still not Bitcoin...
