Ethereum | Ethereum 2.0
Upon reading the book Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and Dapps by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Gavid Wood. I really learned a lot about Ethereum and its uses around the blockchain and cryptocurrency.
For chapter 1 this is my analysis: Ethereum as described commonly as “the world computer” why world computer? Mainly because it is open source which everyone has an access, aside from that it runs on a blockchain where it can synchronize and store the system’s state changes then run smart contracts along with every transactions. Ethereum is also a cryptocurrency and its token symbol is ETH which is currently sitting on the second spot behind Bitcoin or BTC.
Let’s compare Bitcoin and Ethereum, this is a common topic for everyone. Both of them share many common features such as : peer-to-peer network (P2P) , Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithm , digital signatures and hashes lastly, as a digital currency. But for the currency part, Ethereum only uses ETH for the gas fees or payment for every transactions around the platform, more of this later on. On the programming part, Bitcoin uses C++ programming language which is very limited as compared to Ethereum’s language which is Turing complete, it can function as a general-purpose computer. Ethereum’s backbone is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) this is the part where virtual stack embedded within each full node, it is responsible for executing those smart contracts for every transactions. Those transactions are controlled by a consensus algorithm over the blockchain and it is enforced in order to prevent some errors or inaccuracies. And it is important to take note that not all blockchains are created equal, they differ with different characteristics such as open, public, etc.
Now, some history about Ethereum. It was started 2013 from the idea of Vitalik Buterin, a young programmer and Bitcoin enthusiast. Since Bitcoin was very limited, they need to think of building from another blockchain but the process will need a lot of work and preparations. Vitalik approached to Mastercoin team and proposed a flexible and and scriptable contracts to replace the existing contract language of Mastercoin. Then in December 2013, Vitalik shared his whitepaper outlining the idea behind Ethereum a Turing-complete and general-purpose blockchain. After this a lot of investors shared some positive feedback and they helped him to advance the proposal. Both Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Dr. Gavin Wood commented on the early draft of the whitepaper. But Dr. Gavin Wood was one of the first people that helped Vitalik and offered to improve his C++ programming skills. Then Dr. Gavin Wood became Ethereum’s cofounder, codesigner, and CTO. Both Vitalik and Gavin started working the idea, together they built the protocol layer that became Ethereum. After years of hardwork, the founders of Ethereum has successfully mined the first block and it was on July 30, 2015. This is a great breakthrough in the cryptocurrency.
There are four stages of development on Ethereum. These are Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis and Serenity. Each stage contains some subreleases or we can say some patch updates they are named Ice Age, DAO, Tangerine Whistle and so on. This subreleases are important and much anticipated by the investors because it drives the price of Ethereum upwards and the development makes the transaction smooth and cheaper. The latest stage update of Ethereum is the London hardfork, it adds a lot of complexity to the fee logic, but it could potentially stabilize the fee dynamics. Now the most anticipated stage is the Serenity, it will make Ethereum more scalable, secure and sustainable known as Eth 2.0. A lot of investors has already staked their ETH for this upcoming release which shows a lot of support to the upcoming project. Hoping that this will eliminate the existing high gas fee problems which I’m really having a hard time right now. Ethereum has made a lot of progress over the years from a general-purpose blockchain to a platform for Decentralized Applications (DApps). We are slowly approaching to web 3.0 and this is a good milestone for this era.
Lastly, who do we need to learn Ethereum? It looks complex at first but once you’ve known the concepts and ideas behind it you will be fascinated how it really works. Ethereum is a great platform for learning about blockchains and it’s an advantage for every developers because of its fast performance compared to other blockchains. There are lots of decentralized apps currently on Ethereum blockchain and it continuously outthink different competitors. But my takeaway from this is that not all blockchains are created equally maybe there is a better blockchain yet to exist and overwhelm Ethereum someday. Overall, the journey with Ethereum system is interesting and I’m looking forward on learning more from it.