What is Ethereum?
Ethereum (ETH) is a programmable blockchain that launched in 2015. Where Bitcoin was designed primarily as money, Ethereum was designed as a global virtual machine - a world computer that can run arbitrary code in the form of smart contracts. ETH is the native asset of that network and is used to pay for computation, secure the chain through staking, and as a unit of account across most of DeFi.
Ethereum is the largest smart-contract platform by total value locked and by active developers. It hosts stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, lending markets, NFTs, rollups, restaking systems and most of the tokenized real-world asset economy.
How does Ethereum work?
Ethereum switched from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake in 2022 in an upgrade called The Merge. Validators lock up 32 ETH as a bond and are chosen in a randomised schedule to propose and attest to new blocks. Misbehaviour is punished by slashing part of the stake, so honest participation is the profit-maximising strategy.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) executes smart contracts deterministically across all nodes. Each operation costs 'gas', priced in gwei (a billionth of an ETH), so expensive computation is throttled by an economic fee market. Since EIP-1559, a portion of every transaction fee is burned, making ETH issuance deflationary during periods of heavy use.