“Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.”
After developers started understanding the concept of blockchains, there brains start clicking with new use cases for blockchains. Not only a currency, the blockchain can be used for identity management, digital asset management, corporate governance, distributed computational power etc. People started developing different blockchains for their own use. As a user and developer you will have to hop on different blockchains for their respective use and development. Ethereum has build a blockchain that can be used as infrastructure to create and run apps.
Ethereum makes it possible for any developer to build and publish distributed applications. These apps are generally written as smart contracts in Ethereum’s native language Solidity. Contracts are the building blocks for Ethereum. These contracts can be used to build currencies, decentralised computational network, storage systems, registries and thousand more applications.
Anyone can set up an Ethereum node and run the network. This way even if a single node or an app gets corrupted it does not effect the whole network. Ethereum eliminates need of developing different blockchains, setting up of different nodes. All of these dapps and smart contracts can run using Ethereum network. Essentially this means even there is one user for your app, you can host and run it using Ethereum.
Ether is Ethereum’s cryptofuel. It is a type of digital token that powers the applications on the decentralized network. To deregulate the price for computation, miners in Ethereum network charge Gas in units of Ether for their computational power. The more computation a transaction requires the more ether it consumes. Sending a transaction to a contract causes its code to execute. Contracts can store data, send transactions and interact with other contracts.
In simple terms, Ethereum is like a cloud service where you can host your apps. You can create, secure, decentralise and trade anything over the Ethereum network. Instead of paying a single company like Amazon or Google, you will know pay to a miner which helps you execute your code.
