Ethereum was originally conceptualized in 2013 and an introductory paper on Ethereum was published in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin. But by 2014, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, Amir Chetrit (the initial 5), Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, & Jeffrey Wilcke were added as founders of Ethereum along with Vitalik Buterin.
Ethereum is based on the fundamentals of blockchain technology, it is an open-source software platform. Ethereum's key benefit is that it enables programmers to create and implement decentralized applications. Developers can design different apps on Ethereum.
Ethereum currently uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism. This means that anyone who wants to add new blocks to the chain must solve a difficult puzzle that requires a lot of computing power. Solving the puzzle "proves" that you have done the "work" by using computational resources. Doing this is known as mining. Mining is typically brute force trial and error, but successfully adding a block is rewarded in ETH.
Ether (ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum. The purpose of ether is to allow for a market for computation. Ethereum is the network and to run this network (solve puzzles, carry transactions, carry out smart contracts) one needs computing power. This computing power is decided by the size of the task (run on the network), thus any person (or group of people) who wishes to provide their computing services must be paid the relative transaction fees. This fee is settled in Ether, and this is the cryptocurrency asset that is bought and sold by interested parties.
Ethereum thus differentiates itself from other cryptocurrencies as being a software network and a virtual asset at the same time.
On August 7, 2015, the first Ethereum transaction was carried out using the transaction hash of block 46147.
Since its creation in 2015, Ethereum was under $1 for the major part of 2015, but by March 2016 Ether crossed the $10 mark, when it briefly reached $10.03 on March 4, 2016.
By 2017, Ether had gained popularity and reached the $100 mark in May 2017. By the end of 2017, Ether had reached a value of $774.69 and within the first week of 2018, it crossed the $1000 mark.
After the unprecedented boom, Ether too was consumed by the 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the bitcoin crash) and reduced to under just $100 apiece in value by the end of 2018.
From 2019 to 2021, Ether once again continued to rally and reached its highest price of $4,815 on November 9, 2021.
For the first half of 2022, Ether had dipped in value.
Ethereum has undergone significant technological upgrades to its blockchain since its inception in 2015.
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