Ethereum
Introduction
Ethereum is blockchain with smart contract functionality.
It was conceived in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin and released the July 30th 2015. Also, Ethereum should get a major update in June 2022.
For Vitalik Buterin, blockchains could benefit from other applications besides money. Moreover, it needed a more robust language for application development, in order to link real-world assets such as stocks and property, to the blockchain.
Token Standards (ERC)
ERC (Ethereum Request for Comments) help ensure smart contracts remain composable, so any token using a standard is compatible with any other smart contract using the same standard.
Here are the different ERC:
ERC-20
The ERC-20, proposed by Fabian Vogelsteller in November 2015, is a standard interface for fungible (interchangeable) tokens, like voting tokens, staking tokens or virtual currencies.
Provided functionalities:
transfer tokens from one account to another
get the current token balance of an account
get the total supply of the token available on the network
approve whether an amount of token from an account can be spent by a third-party account
ERC-721
The ERC-721, proposed by William Entriken, Dieter Shirley, Jacob Evans, Nastassia Sachs in January 2018, is a standard interface for Non-Fongible Tokens (NFT), like artworks, ENS, lands in a metaverse or positions in DeFi.
Provided functionalities:
transfer tokens from one account to another
get the current token balance of an account
get the owner of a specific token
get the total supply of the token available on the network
approve whether an amount of token from an account can be spent by a third-party account
ERC-777
Coming soon
ERC-1155
Coming soon
ERC-4626
Coming soon
Gas
Unit of measure for the amount of computational effort required to execute specific operations on the Ethereum network;
Gas is paid in Gwei (1 Gwei = 0.000000001 ETH);
Gas is used to pay for transactions fees.
Gas & energy correlation
Since gas is a unit of measure for the amount of computational effort required, the more gas is required for a function, the more energy is required. But this can be negligible, depending on various factors:
Hardware used to validate transactions & running smart contracts;
Number of nodes (every nodes must validate the transaction);
Number of users (multiply the gas cost of a function by the number of users using it).
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