What is Ether?
Summary
Ether (ETH or Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency used on the Ethereum network and is used to compensate miners who secure transactions. A planned upgrade to the Ethereum protocol in 2019-2021 would replace mining with a less computationally expensive Proof of Stake mechanism which will be secured by validators, who are also expected to receive a proportional compensation in Ether. Ether also has many current use cases, such as a store of value (e.g. in lending collateral), a medium of exchange (e.g. in trade and payments), and a unit of account (e.g. in digital marketplaces).
Ether Use Cases
Network Usage
Ether is required to transact on the Ethereum network.
As explained in the gas section, every transaction that occurs on the network requires a set amount of gas, which is the unit used to measure the computational power required to process a transaction. To process a transaction and include it in a block, miners are expected to be compensated for this task. This is accomplished by setting a gas price with every transaction, which is the cost of 1 unit of gas, denominated in Gwei (1 ETH = 1,000,000,000 Gwei).
For example, when you simply send ETH from one account to another, this cost 21,000 gas. If you were to set a gas price of 1 Gwei, this transaction would cost 0.000021 ETH.
Store of Value
Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum network, derives its value from a myriad of different factors. It is used within the Ethereum network to perform a range of functions, including:
used to pay Ethereum transaction fees (in the form of ‘gas’), used as collateral for a wide range of open finance applications (MakerDAO, Compound), can be lent or borrowed (Dharma), accepted as payment by certain retailers and service providers use it as a medium of exchange to purchase Ethereum-based tokens (via ICOs or exchanges), crypto-collectibles, in-game items, and other non-fungible tokens (NFTs) earned as a reward for completing bounties (Gitcoin, Bounties Network). Furthermore, in Ethereum 2.0 (Serenity), users will be able to become a validator and help secure the network by providing computational resources and locking up 32 Ether per validator. Due to this, it is expected that Proof of Stake will lock a substantial amount of the circulating supply of Ether. There are also discussions around introducing a ‘fee-burn’ model where a percentage of Ether used to pay transaction fees would be ‘burned’ and thus reduce the circulating supply of Ether.
In addition to utility value, Ether also has speculative value. This is value that is derived from speculative activities (such as trading and investing) which currently accounts for most of the value behind all crypto-assets. As observed in 2017, crypto-assets can attract substantial speculative interest, with some assets increasing in value by 1000x over just a few months. This speculative interest often brings fresh capital into the ecosystem that can be reinvested into various verticals, but it can be damaging to the short-term market sentiment of all crypto-assets.
Can’t tokens on Ethereum be used instead of Ether?
Theoretically, yes. Practically, no. The concept of using another asset to secure the Ethereum network is called ‘economic abstraction’ (a good primer can be found here. This would involve miners / validators accepting tokens other than Ether in exchange for adding valid transactions to new blocks.
It is highly unlikely that the Ethereum protocol will ever implement economic abstraction as it could potentially reduce the security of the blockchain by compromising the value of Ether.
How does valuable Ether help to secure the network?
In Proof of Work systems, miners compete with each other to find a block and thus be rewarded for their work (in the form of the native crypto-asset of the protocol). As the price of the asset increases, it naturally brings with it more miners, which then increases the network difficulty. As the network difficulty increases, it becomes increasingly difficult for miners to find a block which results in large scale mining operations (commonly referred to as “mining farms”) being one of the only profitable ways to mine on a Proof of Work network (once it reaches a certain size). Miners can also join ‘mining pools’ in order to increase their chances of finding a block and thus increase their rewards.
It would currently cost an individual or group a large amount of money to successfully attack or take control of either the Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW blockchains
When Ethereum transitions to Proof of stake under Ethereum 2.0, it is expected that users will be able to stake 32 Ether per validator and receive rewards for their work in the form of additional Ether (at a dynamic issuance rate , discussed later in this essay).
Under Proof of Stake, the cost of attacking Ethereum will be tied to the cost of Ether. Instead of using energy intensive mining (as it is under Proof of Work), validators will “stake” Ether, and will lose part or all of their stake if they attempt to behave fraudulently. The more validators with staked Ether securing the network, the more Ether an attacker would need to purchase in order to carry out an attack. Such an attack would likely rapidly increase the price of Ether and thus make it prohibitively more expensive for the attacker.
Medium of Exchange
In order for something to function as money within an economy, it needs to act as a good medium of exchange (MoE), unit of account (UoA) and store of value (SoV). Ether is used as a medium of exchange within the Ethereum economy for a wide range of apps, with dApp providers accepting it in exchange for fungible / non-fungible tokens, or other services. It is also used as a unit of account by various parties (including companies that have raised Ether via ICOs). Finally, Ether has historically been used as a store of value, with investors and speculators purchasing Ether to hold for investment purposes, given its relative scarcity, predictable supply growth, and inherent utility.
An object (physical or digital) must typically exhibit five distinct attributes in order to be considered as money: portability, durability, divisibility, fungibility and established history (see the Lindy effect). Ether is highly portable (because it’s digital), durable (again, because it’s digital), divisible (up to 18 decimal places), but has limited fungibility as ETH tokens are interchangeable with one another, but accounts/addresses can be blacklisted quite easily. Privacy protocols such as zk-SNARKs will eventually improve this property for Ethereum.
Ethereum has been in operation since 2015 and continues to build a strong established history. The Ethereum network (and Ether) have functioned as expected for 99.99% of its life. The other 0.01% includes surviving The DAO, multiple large hacks of smart contracts, multiple protocol-level exploits, the Shanghai DoS attacks, constant negative remarks from the wider crypto community and multiple bear markets (including a recent 94% drop in price).
On top of this, Ether has additional properties such as being censorship-resistant, permission-less, pseudonymous and interoperable with other crypto-networks.
The supply scheme of crypto-assets is hotly debated among various parties (especially those in the Bitcoin community) and there are currently two main approaches: a capped supply (like Bitcoin) or a low, predictable and hard to change issuance rate (like what is planned for Ethereum 2.0).
In Ethereum 2.0 (with Sharding and Proof of Stake implemented), while a low inflation rate will always guarantee the validators are rewarded for securing the network, it suffers from the fact that it may dilute the value of Ether for those that are not validators. Though, this is offset by Ether being taken out of the circulating supply through staking, various open finance applications, fee burning, and people simply losing access to their Ether.
bitcoin node bitcoin keys bitcoin grant network bitcoin системе bitcoin joker bitcoin ico monero
ethereum serpent
bitcoin grafik bitcoin traffic теханализ bitcoin bitcoin froggy символ bitcoin buy ethereum заработок bitcoin bitcoin neteller joker bitcoin autobot bitcoin сокращение bitcoin
продажа bitcoin bitcointalk monero ethereum форум difficulty monero bitcoin сша
monero wallet json bitcoin bitcoin generation nicehash monero topfan bitcoin майнеры bitcoin bitcoin blue форки ethereum bitcoin капча
gift bitcoin Litecoin and Bitcoin use contrasting algorithms when hashing. Bitcoin employs SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2), which is considered more complex. Litecoin uses a memory-intensive algorithm referred to as scrypt.статистика ethereum bitcoin puzzle wirex bitcoin ethereum news
bcc bitcoin cryptocurrency forum bitcoin links flappy bitcoin доходность bitcoin monero майнинг форум bitcoin bitcoin уязвимости обменник tether putin bitcoin roll bitcoin Self-destruct set: a set of accounts (if any) that will be discarded after the transaction completes.суть bitcoin
lite bitcoin проверка bitcoin банкомат bitcoin
payable ethereum capitalization bitcoin bitcoin king conference bitcoin адреса bitcoin ethereum foundation кошелек bitcoin
bitcoin development moon ethereum
neo bitcoin 1 ethereum bitcoin гарант bitcoin analytics cryptocurrency это обменник monero monero майнить ethereum стоимость java bitcoin цена bitcoin connect bitcoin tether программа
кошелек tether калькулятор bitcoin
rx560 monero bitcoin metatrader
bitcoin half iso bitcoin 33 bitcoin bitcoin plus bitcoin onecoin This introductory paper was originally published in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, before the project's launch in 2015. It's worth noting that Ethereum, like many community-driven, open-source software projects, has evolved since its initial inception.Bitcoins are worthless because they're based on unproven cryptographyapi bitcoin bitcoin хабрахабр cryptocurrency law Litecoin Mining Calculatorbitcoin удвоитель bitcoin carding bitcoin конвектор ethereum игра робот bitcoin bitcoin block bitcoin сша обмен monero bitcoin автосерфинг заработок bitcoin segwit bitcoin bitcoin desk биржи ethereum ad bitcoin bitcoin london
reklama bitcoin
сбербанк ethereum metal bitcoin my ethereum 60 bitcoin bitcoin wm bitcoin simple raiden ethereum bitcoin china ethereum форки rates bitcoin bitcoin book bitcoin продам bitcoin instant bitcoin шахты
bitcoin download bitcoin banking ethereum testnet бот bitcoin bitcoin прогнозы bitcoin доходность bitcoin auction
ethereum сайт cryptonote monero магазин bitcoin coingecko ethereum
roulette bitcoin On 15 March 2018, Lightning Labs released the beta version of its lnd Lightning Network implementation for bitcoin mainnet, and on 28 March 2018, ACINQ released a mainnet beta of its eclair implementation and desktop application.bitcoin сайты bitcoin python проекта ethereum
bitcoin motherboard bitcoin доходность bitcoin telegram flash bitcoin bitcoin bow bitcoin login ethereum russia polkadot su bitcoin crypto india bitcoin Bitcoin supports signing transactions without broadcasting them; there is a principle that any currently possible signed but not broadcast transactions should remain valid and broadcastable. A good example of this are transactions with nLocktime that are not valid for confirmation until after the time specified by the transaction; this could be used for inheritance or other time delayed purposes. There could be dangerous repercussions to changing this rule - an unknowable number of unbroadcast transactions could become invalid. No one wants to be responsible for destroying someone’s wealth because a rule upon which a user was relying was pulled out from underneath them.продам ethereum tether пополнение bitcoin banks bitcoin монет
bitcoin обзор Fully dressing-down Proof-of-Stake consensus is beyond the scope of this essay, except to say that it is not a viable replacement for Proof-of-Work consensus mechanisms. Some Proof-of-Stake implementations try to circumvent attack vectors with clever incentive schemes, such as in Ethereum’s yet-to-be-released Slasher mechanism.Describing the properties of cryptocurrencies we need to separate between transactional and monetary properties. While most cryptocurrencies share a common set of properties, they are not carved in stone.excel bitcoin bitcoin investment смесители bitcoin ethereum coin tether верификация tradingview bitcoin
майн ethereum bitcoin base платформы ethereum bitcoin mmgp bitcoin masters шахта bitcoin bitcoin de bitcoin options ethereum упал bitcoin prices 777 bitcoin sportsbook bitcoin super bitcoin bitcoin бизнес tether верификация kraken bitcoin
ethereum swarm talk bitcoin
bitcoin сбор laundering bitcoin расчет bitcoin индекс bitcoin bitcoin мошенничество wired tether bitcoin бонусы rigname ethereum bitcoin 99 monero usd ethereum miners миксер bitcoin криптовалюта ethereum работа bitcoin monero обменять ethereum txid bitcoin background продам ethereum зарегистрировать bitcoin
monero биржи nanopool ethereum drip bitcoin bitcoin ether
bitcoin donate форк bitcoin raspberry bitcoin bitcoin conveyor chvrches tether The financial sector has captured a larger percentage of the economy over time because there is greater demand for financial services in a world in which money is constantly impaired. Stocks, corporate bonds, treasuries, sovereign bonds, mutual funds, equity ETFs, bond ETFs, levered ETFs, triple levered ETFs, fractional shares, mortgage-backed securities, CDOs, CLOs, CDS, CDX, synthetic CDS/CDX, etc. All of these products represent the financialization of the economy, and they become more relevant (and in greater demand) when the monetary function is broken.хешрейт ethereum bitcoin 4000 The ingenious idea of Bitcoin was to use technology to create a currency founded on principles of mathematics, cryptography, game theory and social economics and in doing so address many of the perceived flaws in the world of finance. It could link unknown parties together to complete transactions and combat the incentives of corrupt persons or organizations to control and exploit money at the expense of others. For the first time, it was possible to explicitly depict and allocate digital value on the internet without the help of a third party.bitcoin ecdsa bitcoin россия bitcoin обменник bitcoin презентация cryptocurrency mining bitcoin department bitcoin easy bitcoin sha256 график bitcoin monero майнить
bitcoin safe daily bitcoin ios bitcoin ethereum go bitcoin game доходность bitcoin cryptocurrency биржа ethereum Cost - $140котировки bitcoin bitcoin vector raiden ethereum film bitcoin steam bitcoin курсы ethereum hosting bitcoin programming bitcoin bitcoin capital bitcoin cap flappy bitcoin bittrex bitcoin bitcoin перевод bitcoin cny bitcoin компьютер bitcoin банк bitcoin купить to bitcoin bitcoin loan консультации bitcoin ethereum calculator iphone tether bitcoin сайты bitcoin price Modularity: the parts of the Ethereum protocol should be designed to be as modular and separable as possible. Over the course of development, our goal is to create a program where if one was to make a small protocol modification in one place, the application stack would continue to function without any further modification. Innovations such as Ethash (see the Yellow Paper Appendix or wiki article), modified Patricia trees (Yellow Paper, wiki) and RLP (YP, wiki) should be, and are, implemented as separate, feature-complete libraries. This is so that even though they are used in Ethereum, even if Ethereum does not require certain features, such features are still usable in other protocols as well. Ethereum development should be maximally done so as to benefit the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, not just itself.верификация tether monero вывод
bitcoin asic bitcoin халява
bitcoin billionaire tether майнинг conference bitcoin cronox bitcoin ethereum scan in bitcoin bitcoin перевод bear bitcoin bitcoin кошелька видео bitcoin bitcoin transaction auction bitcoin bitcoin генератор bitcoin мониторинг satoshi bitcoin перевести bitcoin ethereum рост blitz bitcoin mooning bitcoin bitcoin balance ethereum txid ethereum farm
clame bitcoin
2016 bitcoin настройка bitcoin fpga ethereum форум bitcoin покупка ethereum skrill bitcoin ethereum кран ethereum news
spend bitcoin ethereum аналитика ethereum кошельки casino bitcoin bitcoin прогноз получение bitcoin ecopayz bitcoin обсуждение bitcoin форк bitcoin
bitcoin click сатоши bitcoin bitcoin отзывы roll bitcoin альпари bitcoin
asic ethereum monero кошелек bitcoin scanner bitcoin weekly bitcoin компьютер ethereum script 4pda bitcoin golang bitcoin форум bitcoin
icon bitcoin future bitcoin
виталик ethereum bitcoin poloniex lightning bitcoin bitcoin etf etherium bitcoin business bitcoin monero dwarfpool ethereum miner ethereum краны bitcoin selling bitcoin passphrase
tabtrader bitcoin bank bitcoin bitcoin payment обналичить bitcoin instant bitcoin ethereum casper bitcoin кошелька картинка bitcoin sha256 bitcoin bitcoin script bitcoin таблица short bitcoin прогнозы bitcoin forecast bitcoin bitcoin перевод tether верификация tether скачать blue bitcoin bitcoin index
bitcoin 4pda bitcoin save rates bitcoin all cryptocurrency bitcoin habr money bitcoin портал bitcoin новости bitcoin лото bitcoin total cryptocurrency ecdsa bitcoin эпоха ethereum ethereum info bitcoin cap bitcoin account бонусы bitcoin bitcoin mixer bitcoin сокращение bitcoin metatrader wisdom bitcoin
майнеры monero ethereum vk
bitcoin торрент bitcoin generate solo bitcoin bitcoin карта кошелька ethereum mt4 bitcoin майнер monero bitcoin обналичить bitcoin tools
get bitcoin bitcoin eu sgminer monero rbc bitcoin safe bitcoin Nonce:To make things really easy for you, I am going to stick with the example of a container carrying boxes! Let’s imagine that the container has reached its first destination. That means the block has been confirmed and it is now available on the public ledger for all to see.Bitcoin is a digital asset designed by its inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, to work as a currency. It is commonly referred to with terms like: digital currency,:1 digital cash, virtual currency, electronic currency, digital gold, or cryptocurrency.bitcoin 2000 bitcoin php заработка bitcoin бесплатный bitcoin удвоитель bitcoin weather bitcoin 1000 bitcoin
ethereum dao сети ethereum заработать ethereum bitcoin лотереи bitcoin casino bitcoin grafik bitcoin hype ethereum видеокарты bitcoin pizza ethereum телеграмм bitcoin гарант server bitcoin
bitcoin что bitcoin 99 trezor bitcoin
parity ethereum supernova ethereum продам bitcoin bitcoin бот bitcoin china bloomberg bitcoin bitcoin оплата bitcoin kazanma bitcoin now проверка bitcoin captcha bitcoin msigna bitcoin king bitcoin monero хардфорк bitcoin trust bitcoin com
p2pool bitcoin
bitcoin зарегистрироваться bitcoin system
best bitcoin monero pro ann bitcoin ethereum habrahabr goldsday bitcoin boxbit bitcoin seed bitcoin фермы bitcoin bitcoin reserve bitcoin генераторы bitcoin daily bitcoin elena games bitcoin byzantium ethereum картинка bitcoin bitcoin майнить bitcoin gambling bitcoin click bitcoin кранов siiz bitcoin bitcoin сети ethereum токен supernova ethereum people bitcoin сайты bitcoin 0 bitcoin торрент bitcoin bitcoin gambling bitcoin доходность bitcoin conveyor
legal bitcoin
monero logo
майнеры monero claim bitcoin
wired tether bitcoin prominer проекты bitcoin
electrum bitcoin bitcoin xl play bitcoin bitcoin теханализ bitcoin checker майнеры monero bitcoin ads новости bitcoin usb bitcoin cryptocurrency calculator