Ethereum is an open-source framework that uses blockchain technologies to build and operate decentralized software applications called “dapps” that allow users to make transactions and exchange directly with each other to acquire, sell and transfer products and services without an intermediary.
Ethereum was created by the nineteen-year – old Russian-Canadian Vitalik buterin, who aimed to take the technology that drives Bitcoin’s Digital currency and make use of it to democratize everything from organizations , corporations, currencies and even to enable users to create “the unchangeable Constitution in their own country.”- to put decision making and power in individuals’ hands to establish political and economic leverage and to take it away from the central banks, companies and power brokers worldwide. The project was unveiled publicly in January 2014, with Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Joe Lubin, Gavin Wood as key teams. The Ethereum network was launched online on July 30, 2015, with 73 million Ether pre-mined.
The company implemented the idea of “decentralised software.” The founder, Vitalik Buterin, has been involved from its creation in the growth of blockchain and bitcoin. Currently, a variety of coins are distributed in ICOs utilizing Ethereum. Such tokens are called the ERC-20, and are the basis for executing scripts in the Ethereum Virtual Machine. With the creation of “smart contracts,” Ethereum has made it feasible to sign tokens that have a particular purpose, besides being a means of trade, and to expand the potential of blockchain transactions.
Since decentralized apps run on the blockchain, they have all their properties that benefit it (1) Secure (2) Corruption & tamper proof (3) Immutability (4) Zero downtime. Secure apps are well shielded from hacking attacks and malicious activities and are secured by cryptography with no central fault. Moreover, apps are built on a network of shared principles that prevent censorship. Lastly, it is a third party that cannot make any changes to data and apps never go down and cannot be switched off. Thus, giving it the property of immutability and zero downtime. However, it is not faultless. Core aspects of Ethereum, intelligent contracts and decentralized apps are based on the code. The apps only work as well as the humans who write them because they are susceptible to bugs and functional vulnerabilities and to hack.