Crypto Academy Contest / S1W1 - Favorite Blockchain Network by @ronindboss

Ethereum Blockchain Introduction

Ethereum is a Blockchain that is founded on a decentralized digital platform and has its own cryptocurrency known as Ether (Eth). Ethereum uses features of Blockchain as well as peer to peer(P2P) network technology which work without the need for middleman.

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Ethereum open source Blockchain enables users to perform transaction, Store Non-Fungible Token (NFTs), Stake and Earn Rewards. Ethereum Blockchain has two version ; Ethereum 1.0 which uses Proof Of Work(PoW) mechanism and Ethereum 2.0 which uses Proof Of Stake (PoS) mechanism. Ethereum was founded in 2013 and was released in 2015.

Brief History of Ethereum Blockchain

Vitalik Buterin ( Ethereum Founder) was intrigued and had interest to Blockchain technology at the age of 17. He was a programmer in 2011 and co-founded Bitcoin Magazine. His vision was a platform that exceed beyond the limit of traditional financial System.

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In 2014, Buterin and his team of programmers started a crowdsourcing campaign and they sold Ether(Ethereum Tokens) to every participants to make their ideology take off and it raised about $18 million. Frontier which was Ethereum first live release was launched in 2015 and since that moment, the platform has seen massive growth and numerous developers and sponsorers are involved.

Ethereum has been experiencing some growing issues and still suffers from it. In 2016, an estimate of $50 million in Ether was reportedly spolen by an unknown hacker which constituted in doubting and questioning about the platform's security. With this issue at hand, There was a split in the Ethereum community which the Blockchain broke into two : Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Why Ethereum Blockchain Is My Favorite

Ethereum is flexible and was built to assist users in the decentralized world. Ethereum utilizes development of smart Contract that made exchange of any valuable between two persons possible. It can range from money, property, shares or any digital assets.

With Ethereum's open source Blockchain, it allows for development and creation of applications without a need for central authority. There are thousands of Dapps built on Ethereum Blockchain which has generated billions of dollars.

I love how Non fungible Tokens (NFTs) was first introduced in late 2017 which uses the Ethereum Blockchain for it's transaction. Ethereum paved a new way for a new type of digital cryptocurrencies. Since then NFTs have attracted a lot of audience and newer organisation are building projects on it.

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Earlier shortcomings of Ethereum blockchain.

A quote spoken by Albert Einstein says,

"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility",

this simply means that, an organisation with a lot of power must have a way of controlling that power. Ethereum has faced a lot of challenges involving transactions. The speed of transaction is been affected by the massive numbers of users which is leading to a major problem. The rate of transaction that the Blockchain van handle is very low. With a bigger Blockchain, it's harder to validate every transaction.

There's a lot of factors that affect rate of transaction speed, it can be the total number of miners, the type of smart Contract and the size of each blocks. So we're to compare speed of mechanisms like Mastercard With it's 25,000 transaction per second with Ethereum's 30 transactions per second, you'll notice that cryptocurrencies are far behind. With this problem at hand, Ethereum has made it their top priority to fix this problem while maintaining the decentralized nature.

What changes I think will make Ethereum blockchain a better network.

I believe that introducing Sharding will be a great way to tackle this problem. Sharding makes the Blockchain to be divided into Shards and the nodes won't be needed to process the data. This will make the transaction to be directed to only the nodes that are affected by a special shard.

Also, off-chain computations is another idea I believe will loosen the Ethereum network by disclosing transactions outside of the Blockchain. With the development of Ethereum 2.0, it'll will use Proof Of Stake Consensus instead of Proof of Work which I think is a good step to solving this problem.

A project built on Ethereum Blockchain

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The project I'm gonna talk about is the first and largest peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto collectibles called "OpenSea". It's a Dapp that focuses on selling and buying of Mainly Crypto Collectibles like NFTs. It's ranked #1 in Ethereum Based Dapp, #2 in marketplaces and #14 in general.

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Opensea make use of a smart Contract developed for buying and selling of digital assets. With the help of Smart contracts, Users can protect and identity the custody of their collectibles in the platform which offers more security to the creators work.

Once an asset or collectibles is uploaded through the smart Contract, it's registered on the Blockchain and cannot be altered or tampered. Even if someone takes a screenshot of a NFTs and trys to sell it, it'll be registered as "Null".

I created an Opensea on February 2022 and I'm still learning alot about the platform. I hope to become a successfully NFT artist. I would love you to visit my profile

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Conclusion

With the creation of Ethereum Blockchain, many individuals have been able to make another source of income as it has lead to creation of jobs and new careers. Thank you for reading my article, have a nice day.⭐