Ethereum with no technical gibberish

Ethereum was born right after bitcoin, It uses the technology behind, which is called blockchain. As you already know, Bitcoin blockchain helps to decentralise money, which means, individuals could trade bitcoin currency without a need for an intermediary. There is no central of failure in this network and it is impossible to shut down, manipulate or control since each bitcoin transaction is validated and confirmed by the entire bitcoin network. What if we copy this central free authority for other functions of society, Ethereum came just for that purpose.

Blockchain technology

Blockchain technology is the by-product of the bitcoin invention, Blockchain technology was created by fusing already existing technologies like cryptography, proof of work and decentralised network architecture together in order to create a system that can reach decisions without central authorities. “Blockchain technology” term made its first appearance after the bitcoin was invented.

"Blockchain is to bitcoin, what the internet is to email"

Birth of the Ethereum blockchain

Blockchain in general is a system on the top of which we can build applications and programs, a currency like bitcoin was one of the options. Back then, bitcoin was running on a large network, which was pretty limited because it understands only small sets of orders like who sent how much money to whom. If we want to create a more complex set of orders, We will need what we call the Ethereum network that was brought to life in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin who at the time was the co-founder of bitcoin magazine.

Definition of Ethereum

Ethereum is do it yourself platform for decentralised programs, also known as Dapps “Decentralised apps”. If you want to create a decentralised program that no single person control not even you, even though you wrote it. All you have to do, is to learn Ethereum programming language called solidity.

The Ethereum platform has thousands of independent computers running it, meaning it is fully decentralised. Once a program is fully deployed in the Ethereum network. These computers, also known as nodes will make sure it executes as written. Ethereum is the infrastructure for running dapps worldwide. It’s not a currency, it is a platform. The currency used to run the network is called Ether.

Ethereum blockchain goal

Ethereum’s goal is to truly decentralise the internet, Since it is centralised and controlled by most of the giants of the web. There is no activity on the internet that happens without an intermediary. But with Ethereum, people could start to imagine and design an internet that connects users directly without the needs for the centralised 3rd party. For example People can rent hard drive space directly to other people and make Dropbox obsolete.

"Ethereum allows people to connect directly with each other without a central authority"

How Ethereum decentralise things

Ethereum coding language "Solidity", is used to write smart contracts, that are the logic that runs dapps. In real life all contracts are sets of "Ifs" and "Thens" meaning a set of conditions and actions. For example, if I pay the landlord 1k on the first of the month, then he lets me use my apartment. That's exactly smart contract works on Ethereum. Ethereum developers write the conditions of their program or dapp and then the Ethereum network executes it, they are called smart contracts because they deal with all the aspects of a usual contract : enforcement, management, performance and payment.

Code is Law

Smart contract behaves like a judge, it is uncompromisingly letter strict. It follows the rules down to a T. and can't take any secondary considerations on the spirit of the law into account. Once the smart contract is deployed on the Ethereum network, it cannot be edited or corrected, even by its original author. It's Immutable, The only way to change this contract, would be to convince the entire Ethereum network that a change should be made, And that's virtually impossible. And this open a whole word to a complex and insecure contract.

"Smart contract should be written with a perfect accuracy in order to make sure that the contract does only what the author intended"

DAO event crashing halt

DAO stands for the decentralised autonomous organisation, which allows users to deposit money and get returns based on the investment that the DAO made, the decisions would be crowd sourced and decentralized, Back then, The DAO raised a $150M in Ethereum currency, Ether. When ether was trading at around $20. All this sounded very good, the code wasn't secured very well and resulted in someone figuring out a way to drain the DAO out of money using a loophole found in the DAO's smart contract. As a consequence, the Ethereum community decided that code is no longer is the law.

Ethereum classic birth

The small minority that didn't agree with the Ethereum developer who decided that code is no longer is the law and changed the Ethereum rules in order to bail out the investors for the sake of reverting all the money that went into the DAO. This minority stuck to the original Ethereum blockchain before its protocol was altered and that's how Ethereum classic was born. Which is actually the original Ethereum

Ethereum currency

To power the dapps into the large network of computers, we need Ether, the currency of Ethereum network. When people talk about the price of Ethereum, they actually refer to the price of Ether, the currency that incentivises people to run the Ethereum protocol on their computers. In order to deploy a smart contract to the Ethereum network, it's author must pay Ether. This is made in order to push people to write optimised and efficient code rather than wasting Ethereum network computing power in unnecessary tasks.

C/c

Ethereum is a network of computers working together to replace the centralised model of programs and companies which run the internet today.