The programmable blockchain that powers decentralized applications, DeFi, and NFTs.
Overview
Ethereum is the world's leading smart contract platform, conceived in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin in a whitepaper written when he was 19 years old, and launched on 30 July 2015 after a 2014 crowdsale. While Bitcoin introduced decentralised money, Ethereum introduced decentralised computing — a global, programmable blockchain where developers can build and deploy applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, or third-party interference. The original co-founders included Buterin, Gavin Wood (who wrote the Yellow Paper formalising the EVM and later founded Polkadot), Charles Hoskinson (who later founded Cardano), Joseph Lubin (who founded ConsenSys), and several others.
Smart contracts are self-executing programs stored on the Ethereum blockchain that automatically enforce the terms of an agreement when predefined conditions are met. This simple concept has spawned entirely new industries: decentralised finance (DeFi) with hundreds of billions in total value locked at peak, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing digital ownership, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) governing multi-billion-dollar treasuries, on-chain identity, coordination games, and much more. Roughly 60% of stablecoin supply and the majority of on-chain USD volume settle on Ethereum or Ethereum-secured L2s, making it the closest thing crypto has to a global settlement layer.
Ethereum's history includes several defining events. The 2016 DAO hack — a $60M smart-contract exploit — triggered a contentious hard fork that produced Ethereum (ETH, the forked chain that reversed the hack) and Ethereum Classic (ETC, the original chain). In September 2022, Ethereum completed 'The Merge,' transitioning from energy-intensive Proof of Work to Proof of Stake consensus using a beacon chain that had been running in parallel since December 2020. This reduced Ethereum's electricity consumption by about 99.988% overnight (ethereum.org) — one of the most consequential engineering pivots in crypto history. In March 2024 the Dencun upgrade shipped EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding), introducing 'blob' data availability that cut Layer 2 costs by an order of magnitude.
The network continues to evolve through a multi-phase roadmap known as the 'Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge' — covering rollup scalability, MEV mitigation, statelessness, state cleanup, and miscellaneous improvements respectively. The rollup-centric roadmap explicitly assumes most user activity moves to Layer 2 rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync, Scroll, and dozens more), with Ethereum L1 evolving into a settlement and data-availability layer. As of 2026 this transition is well underway: the majority of transactions and users have moved to L2s, though the bulk of the highest-value transactions still settle on L1.
Ethereum created the concept of a general-purpose programmable blockchain, which enabled an explosion of innovation including DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, stablecoins, on-chain identity, and the entire Layer 2 ecosystem. The vast majority of blockchain development occurs on Ethereum or Ethereum-compatible chains, and the EVM has become the de-facto standard virtual machine that most new L1s and L2s implement for interoperability. Ethereum's transition to Proof of Stake demonstrated that a major blockchain network can fundamentally change its consensus mechanism without breaking, and its rollup-centric scaling roadmap is shaping the future architecture of Web3.
How It Works
The basics
Ethereum runs on a network of tens of thousands of computers (nodes) worldwide. Developers write smart contracts in a programming language such as Solidity (or Vyper, Fe, Huff), which are compiled to EVM bytecode and deployed to the Ethereum Virtual Machine — a Turing-complete stack-based virtual machine that every node executes identically. When a user interacts with a smart contract — such as swapping tokens on Uniswap — the transaction is signed with their private key and broadcast to the public mempool.
Going deeper
Validators who have staked at least 32 ETH (or delegated to a liquid-staking provider like Lido or Rocket Pool) are pseudo-randomly assigned to propose and attest to new blocks; consensus uses Casper FFG (a finality gadget) atop LMD-GHOST (a fork choice rule) to reach finality within two epochs (~12.8 minutes). Users pay 'gas fees' in ETH for the computational work required to process their transactions, with fees split into a base fee (burned, reducing total ETH supply) and a priority fee (paid to the block proposer). Since EIP-1559 (2021), Ethereum has been net-deflationary during periods of high network activity because base-fee burning outpaces new ETH issuance.
Under the hood
Users increasingly interact via Layer 2 rollups that batch many transactions into a single L1 transaction, inheriting L1 security while offering fees typically ~10-100x lower.
Pros & Cons
- Largest smart contract ecosystem with the most developers, applications, and total value locked
- Proof of Stake consensus cut electricity use by about 99.988% at The Merge (ethereum.org)
- Massive DeFi ecosystem including leading protocols like Uniswap, Aave, Lido, and MakerDAO
- Most battle-tested smart contract platform with over 9 years of operation
- Thriving Layer 2 ecosystem (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) dramatically reduces fees
- Gas fees on the base layer can still be expensive during periods of high demand
- The base layer processes only about 15-30 transactions per second
- Smart contract complexity creates a larger attack surface for exploits and bugs
- The staking requirement of 32 ETH is a significant barrier for solo validators
- Network upgrades move slowly due to the conservative approach to changes
Use Cases
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) — lending, borrowing, trading, and yield farming
- Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for digital art, collectibles, gaming assets, and real-world asset tokenization
- Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for community governance
- Stablecoins — USDT, USDC, and DAI are all primarily issued on Ethereum
- Layer 2 rollups that inherit Ethereum's security while providing cheap, fast transactions
Price Chart
Historical USD price from CoinGecko. Educational reference — not investment advice.
Live Market Data
- Market Cap Rank
- #2
- Market Cap
- $259.96B
- 24h Volume
- $10.62B
- Fully Diluted Val
- $259.96B
- All-Time High
- $4,946.05-56.99%August 2025
- All-Time Low
- $0.432979October 2015
- 24h Range
- $2,108.59 – $2,242.93
Market data from CoinGecko, refreshed every 15 minutes. Educational reference only — not investment advice.
Project Health
Dev activity via CoinGecko, TVL/audit status via DefiLlama; official links are the project’s own. Presence here is not an endorsement.
Ethereum network
Current gas prices — the fee to transact on Ethereum, in gwei (billionths of an ETH).
Via Blockscout. Gas prices fluctuate with demand; figures are current estimates, not advice.
Public-company ETH treasuries
- BitMine ImmersionUS6,060,506 ETH4.96%
- SharpLinkUS888,938 ETH0.73%
- The Ether MachineUS496,712 ETH0.41%
- Bit DigitalUS158,462 ETH0.13%
- Coinbase GlobalUS152,649 ETH0.13%
- Galaxy Digital Holdings LtdUS97,764 ETH0.08%
Via CoinGecko. Institutional-holdings context only — not investment advice.
Where ETH trades
The most active markets for ETH by 24h volume. Informational only — these are not affiliate links or endorsements.
Data via CoinGecko. Always verify you are on an exchange’s official domain before trading.
Latest Ethereum news
Headlines via crypto news RSS- Vitalik ‘pivots’ ETH to store of value, crypto suffers after US midterms: Hodler’s DigestCointelegraph · Nov 8, 2026
- Vitalik Buterin says ETH should be valued as a store of value, not a fee-burning tokenThe Block · Nov 8, 2026
- Ethereum devs won’t fork Glamsterdam on Hoodi until smart contract risks resolvedCointelegraph · Nov 6, 2026
- Europe’s largest asset manager Amundi tokenizes equity index fund on EthereumCointelegraph · Nov 5, 2026
- Ethereum dev targets 2028 for quantum resistance, a year earlyCointelegraph · Nov 4, 2026
Headlines link to third-party publishers and are not endorsements or investment advice.
Technical Details
- Consensus
- Proof of Stake (Casper FFG + LMD-GHOST)
- Launch Year
- 2015
- Founder
- Vitalik Buterin (with co-founders including Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and others)
- Max Supply
- No hard cap
- Blockchain
- Ethereum
- Website
- ethereum.org
Frequently asked questions
What is Ethereum (ETH)?
Ethereum is the world's leading smart contract platform, conceived in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin in a whitepaper written when he was 19 years old, and launched on 30 July 2015 after a 2014 crowdsale. While Bitcoin introduced decentralised money, Ethereum introduced decentralised computing — a global, programmable blockchain where developers can build and deploy applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, or third-party interference. The original co-founders included Buterin, Gavin Wood (who wrote the Yellow Paper formalising the EVM and later founded Polkadot), Charles Hoskinson (who later founded Cardano), Joseph Lubin (who founded ConsenSys), and several others. Smart contracts are self-executing programs stored on the Ethereum blockchain that automatically enforce the terms of an agreement when predefined conditions are met. This simple concept has spawned entirely new industries: decentralised finance (DeFi) with hundreds of billions in total value locked at peak, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing digital ownership, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) governing multi-billion-dollar treasuries, on-chain identity, coordination games, and much more. Roughly 60% of stablecoin supply and the majority of on-chain USD volume settle on Ethereum or Ethereum-secured L2s, making it the closest thing crypto has to a global settlement layer. Ethereum's history includes several defining events. The 2016 DAO hack — a $60M smart-contract exploit — triggered a contentious hard fork that produced Ethereum (ETH, the forked chain that reversed the hack) and Ethereum Classic (ETC, the original chain). In September 2022, Ethereum completed 'The Merge,' transitioning from energy-intensive Proof of Work to Proof of Stake consensus using a beacon chain that had been running in parallel since December 2020. This reduced Ethereum's electricity consumption by about 99.988% overnight (ethereum.org) — one of the most consequential engineering pivots in crypto history. In March 2024 the Dencun upgrade shipped EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding), introducing 'blob' data availability that cut Layer 2 costs by an order of magnitude. The network continues to evolve through a multi-phase roadmap known as the 'Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge' — covering rollup scalability, MEV mitigation, statelessness, state cleanup, and miscellaneous improvements respectively. The rollup-centric roadmap explicitly assumes most user activity moves to Layer 2 rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync, Scroll, and dozens more), with Ethereum L1 evolving into a settlement and data-availability layer. As of 2026 this transition is well underway: the majority of transactions and users have moved to L2s, though the bulk of the highest-value transactions still settle on L1.
What is Ethereum used for?
Ethereum created the concept of a general-purpose programmable blockchain, which enabled an explosion of innovation including DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, stablecoins, on-chain identity, and the entire Layer 2 ecosystem. The vast majority of blockchain development occurs on Ethereum or Ethereum-compatible chains, and the EVM has become the de-facto standard virtual machine that most new L1s and L2s implement for interoperability. Ethereum's transition to Proof of Stake demonstrated that a major blockchain network can fundamentally change its consensus mechanism without breaking, and its rollup-centric scaling roadmap is shaping the future architecture of Web3.
How does Ethereum work?
Ethereum runs on a network of tens of thousands of computers (nodes) worldwide. Developers write smart contracts in a programming language such as Solidity (or Vyper, Fe, Huff), which are compiled to EVM bytecode and deployed to the Ethereum Virtual Machine — a Turing-complete stack-based virtual machine that every node executes identically. When a user interacts with a smart contract — such as swapping tokens on Uniswap — the transaction is signed with their private key and broadcast to the public mempool.
What consensus mechanism does Ethereum use?
Proof of Stake (Casper FFG + LMD-GHOST)
What are the pros and cons of Ethereum?
Pros: Largest smart contract ecosystem with the most developers, applications, and total value locked; Proof of Stake consensus cut electricity use by about 99.988% at The Merge (ethereum.org); Massive DeFi ecosystem including leading protocols like Uniswap, Aave, Lido, and MakerDAO; Most battle-tested smart contract platform with over 9 years of operation; Thriving Layer 2 ecosystem (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) dramatically reduces fees. Cons: Gas fees on the base layer can still be expensive during periods of high demand; The base layer processes only about 15-30 transactions per second; Smart contract complexity creates a larger attack surface for exploits and bugs; The staking requirement of 32 ETH is a significant barrier for solo validators; Network upgrades move slowly due to the conservative approach to changes.
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References & further reading
- primaryEthereum whitepaper (Buterin, 2013)
Original proposal introducing the world computer and account model.
- primary
- primaryEIP index
Every Ethereum Improvement Proposal, including EIP-1559, EIP-4844, and consensus-layer specs.
archived copy ↗ - primaryEthereum roadmap — ethereum.org
Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, Splurge phases with current status.
archived copy ↗ - secondaryVitalik's endgame post
Framing for how many chains eventually converge on similar architectures.
archived copy ↗