Ethereum is a smart contracts platform where contracts are coded in either the programming language Solidity or the experimental language Vyper. The primary Ethereum client is written in Golang. Contrary to Bitcoin, Ethereum utilizes an account-based model compared to Bitcoin’s UTXO set due to specific design considerations.
Ethereum rapidly arose as the foundation for the ICO craze of 2017, functioning as the standardized infrastructure for the launch of ERC-20 tokens and innumerable projects striving to become the next major success story. Multiple decentralized applications (dapps) presented intriguing case studies into what was possible with ‘unstoppable applications’ running on the network, but the ICO bubble eventually collapsed, and Ethereum’s community turned its focus to looming scaling issues.
Currently, a proof-of-work consensus blockchain network like Bitcoin, the debate over Ethereum’s ability to meet network demands for a new generation of dapps to run on top of it has led to heated debates about the platform’s future.
Proposed innovations from Plasma to Dappchains have entered the mix, but the widely accepted roadmap for the legacy smart contracts platform has come to be known as Ethereum 2.0 or ‘Serenity’.