Ethereum

Introduced in 2013, Ethereum is one of the oldest and most established blockchain platforms. It provides a truly decentralized blockchain that is comparable to the Bitcoin blockchain network. Manders said its key strength is that it enables true decentralization with support for smart contracts. Its key weaknesses include slow processing times and higher transaction processing costs compared to other platforms. Besides its role as a blockchain platform that underpins enterprise applications, it has its own cryptocurrency called Ether.

Suseel MenonSuseel Menon
The Ethereum platform has seen widespread adoption by technologists who build decentralized applications, or dApps, on the Ethereum network. For example, there are numerous platforms and exchanges for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) -- a type of digital asset that can be exchanged on a blockchain. It has a mature ecosystem of tools for writing smart contracts using the Solidity programming environment, which runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. However, alternative blockchain networks can process transactions much faster at potentially lower cost than Ethereum, though many observers expect this to change after Ethereum adopts a more efficient security mechanism.

It also has an active developer community orchestrated by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which has more than 250 members, including Intel, JPMorgan and Microsoft.

The Ethereum community migrated from a proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof of stake (PoS), which is more energy-friendly. The migration required an elaborate process to spin up a separate, new type of blockchain called a Beacon Chain that has been merged into the existing main Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum Foundation estimated this reduces energy use by 99.95% compared to the older approach.

The community was previously considering sharding, which involved splitting up the Ethereum blockchain to expand the capacity to store data, scale throughput and cut network fees. However, new techniques for combining transactions to be processed together, called layer 2 rollups, evolved faster than expected, and sharding was dropped from the roadmap. Now the community is focusing on a simpler approach, called Proto-Danksharding, which streamlines layer 2 rollups. The goal is to eventually support up to 100,000 transactions per second using this new approach.