Ethereum explained for normal people

Why you should care, how it works, and why it’s not Bitcoin.

glen elkins
5 min readMay 29, 2018

You’ve probably heard a lot about blockchain lately. With Bitcoin’s recent surge in popularity, this new field of distributed cryptographic technology has exploded with companies and blockchains all competing for a piece of the pie.

Bitcoin uses blockchain technology to track transaction of digital currency in a distributed way. Ethereum is a product of that history. As developers started playing with the blockchain, they started to bend and wrap it for purposes other than a digital ledger of currency & transactions.

Ethereum is a product of those struggles: claiming the title of a “next generation” of blockchain. Initially proposed as an update to Bitcoin, Ethereum allows for much greater freedom for developers to explore and execute code on the blockhain, through something called “smart contracts”.

Ethereum has it’s own blockchain, separate from Bitcoin, that contains bits of code that can be executed automatically when a set of criteria are met. Exactly what that code does is up to the developer who makes it, which is the key differentiator here.

Untapped potential

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glen elkins

Front End dev + Solution Architect. Read The Web Performance Handbook — https://amzn.to/39dGsT9