Chapter · Master Ethereum
What Ethereum is
Bitcoin was built mainly to move one kind of money. Ethereum went further: it is a global blockchain that can also run programs. Developers write code, deploy it to the network, and thousands of computers around the world run it and agree on the result. People call it a world computer because the whole network acts like one shared machine that nobody owns. Its coin is called ether, or ETH, and it powers everything that happens on the network.
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What this lesson covers
Why this matters
Because Ethereum can run code, a huge amount of crypto activity lives on top of it: stablecoins, trading apps, NFTs, games, and lending markets. Understanding Ethereum is a bit like understanding the internet before you use websites. You do not need to be a coder, but knowing how the base layer works helps you use everything built on it more safely. 🐜
What you get asked
What makes Ethereum different from Bitcoin at a high level?
Bitcoin focuses on being sound money. Ethereum adds programmability, so people can build apps, tokens, and services that run on the same shared network.
Ethereum's native coin, used to pay for activity on the network, is called ___.
Ether (ticker ETH) is the fuel of Ethereum. You need a little of it to do almost anything on the network.
In what year did the Ethereum network first go live?
The first public version, called Frontier, launched on July 30, 2015. A public crowdsale in 2014 had funded the early work.
Who is most associated with proposing Ethereum, alongside a group of co-founders?
Vitalik Buterin described Ethereum in a 2013 paper. Several co-founders, including Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin, helped build and launch it.
The rest of this chapter
Learn how Ethereum works as a programmable blockchain, from smart contracts and gas to staking, Layer 2s, and DeFi.