As we have seen, the ethereum was presented by Vitalik Buterin in 2014 and has since attracted increasing interest from the public.
Its technology is comparable to that of the bitcoin, as it also uses a blockchain and therefore applies the principle of decentralization.
But it exceeds this technology thanks to a programming language of its own and which allows to design applications that will also be decentralized.
The Ether, cryptocurrency
The currency generated by the Ethereum, Ether has known a very great craze and very rapid growth which in May exceeded the billion dollars.
At the base Ether was not conceived as a crypto money, but was to serve as a means of payment facilitating the good operation of the Ethereum network:
By remunerating those who would bring their computing power to the network and as a means of payment under the Smart contracts.
Ethereum has thus generated a cryptocurrency which a priori resembles the bitcoin because both based on transactions verified by a network and working through proof of calculation which make it possible to pay the miners.
Differences between bitcoin and Ether
But these two currencies have many differences, and these differences can give certain advantages to the Ethereum.
-Bitcoin was limited from the outset to a fixed number of 21 million units making this currency a deflationary currency.
-Ethereum on the contrary has no limit and is therefore inflationary.
-The bitcoin works with blocks limited to 1MB, used to avoid filling the blocks with quasi-zero transactions that can jam the network.
But this limit reduces in fact, necessarily the field of possibilities of the bitcoin.
-Ethereum also has no limit in MB, but has a limit of “gas”, that is to say the cost required in Ether to ensure the execution of a transaction.
This limit can be increased as new blocks are created by the vote of the miners themselves who decide whether to increase this limit.
-To mince a Bitcoin it takes about ten minutes.
-The ether is mined in about 14 seconds, and although to confirm a transaction the companies require 30 confirmations for the Ether unlike a single one for the bitcoin, the time required remains much faster.
-The rewards for the bitcoin miners are halved every four years, thus fixing the approximate date of issuance of the last bitcoin at 2140.
-This is not the case with Ethereum.
-The algorithm used to mine the bitcoin is called “proof of work”, which avoids hacker attacks thanks to its high power.
-Ethereum used the same algorithm so far but will soon switch to another of the name “proof of stake” for its new version “serenity”.
In conclusion, the two technologies, although different, perfectly fulfill their role as virtual money, not forgetting that both are only at the beginning of their development.
Their difference lies mainly in the uses that can be made with these two technologies and it is clear that the applications that can be realized with the Ethereum technology open up innumerable perspectives in the very near future, thus giving it a certain value
