Ethereum Review

Ethereum is widely recognized as the second-largest crypto-currency in the world today. Its value rests at a comfortable $196.71 as of this writing, while its total volume in circulation is at $1.68 billion, around more than a fourth size of Bitcoin’s total volume.

Ethereum is a decentralized system and isn’t answerable to any single body like a bank or a government and operates on a blockchain. However, its function is quite different from that of Bitcoin as its goal isn’t to produce the most valuable crypto-currency in the world or to monopolize the crypto-currency business.

Advantages

Since Ethereum is decentralized, this means that all information held on one database is instantly visible on another and multiple copies of the data can be kept at those databases. This removes the danger of a single point of failure. If any apps or servers are dependent on that blockchain, they have thousands, if not tens of thousands of redundancies and backups.

Ethereum’s blockchain is also faster than that of Bitcoin. While Bitcoin can validate around 3-6 transactions a second, Ethereum can do up to 15.

Further Applications

Ethereum is also being used in business to do something extremely useful: change the way contracts are written. Smart contracts can be written via the Ethereum code and modified and executed automatically if given a set of triggers.

Smart contracts allow the clauses and terms of agreement to be written into the code of Ethereum. This allows certain things to auto execute if contracts aren’t held. Moreover, it adds an extra layer of security on a contract so that transactions and changes to the contract do not go through unless enough parties have signed it.

Then there is also the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) which serves as an environment where smart contracts based on Ethereum can run. Untrusted codes can run on this environment without the danger of two programs interfering with each other.

Ethereum’s applications in the contract space can revolutionize business practices and decrease double crosses and back stabbings that are a staple of business dealings today. If autonomy is given to each party in a contract and their consent is absolutely paramount when it comes to amending the contract or doing anything that doesn’t sit well with them, it is now impossible to do so through Ethereum.