Going through an anecdote of Vitalik Buterin to find out the reason for his project name to be Ethereum
Opening remarks
If Bitcoin can be considered the world’s first global shared accounting ledger then Ethereum can be considered the world’s first shared computing system. It is the second most valuable cryptocurrency in today’s market is because of its widespread application and development of decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts. A smart contract is a precise methodology which is applied in almost any Initial Coin Offering where the tokens are released to the users once the investment is completed.
The origins
In 2013, Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin, with the intention of providing a template to all the programmers and developers around the world to facilitate the creation of decentralized applications. A decentralized application uses nothing but small pieces of automatically executing codes known as smart contracts which in turn uses the cryptocurrency of the network. Born in 1994 buterin was exceptionally well at mathematics and programming in his earlier days itself. However, a number of abnormal incidences are related to his life.
Today the number of decentralized applications is more than ever and the transactions executed on those applications sometimes seem to clog the Ethereum network itself. Weak at social interaction Buterin was introduced to cryptocurrencies through his father. He realized the potential of the decentralized technology and cited the amazing 15 years of constant getaways, by Torrent from the government censorship due to its decentralized behavior.
Vitalik Buterin along with Mihai Alisie had also co-founded Bitcoin magazine in 2012, which is considered to be one of the most reliable sources for news articles in the cryptocurrency space. In the year 2013, he dropped out from his University of Waterloo to convert his passion into a full-time profession.
In January 2014 when the team members publicly announced the network there were only 4 members rigorously working on the project. They were Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio. In July 2015, with 11.9 million Ether coins, the whole network was launched.
How did it get the name?
Once, as geeky Buterin, was scrolling through a list of science fiction elements on Wikipedia he came across the word Ethereum. That was when his heart skipped a beat and decided to name his project as Ethereum. Surprisingly, the subset, Ether refers to an invisible hypothetical medium which seems to cover the entire universe and allows light to pass through it. The tetrahedron which is the symbol used for the Ethereum network is also regarded as the most stable and strong form of dimensions in nature. However, it is difficult to state whether this is a mere coincidence or the outcome of the mastermind plans of Buterin. Nevertheless, everything seems to be going in resonance with each other.
Advance features of the network
The decentralized Turing complete virtual machine known as Ethereum Virtual Machine is capable of running smart contracts on international nodes with much easiness. A Gas which is also known as the powerHouse of Ethereum is nothing but an internal measuring unit of a transaction. The gas value of a transaction is decided by the sender. On the other hand, the miners look for gas values to prioritize the transactions for verification. Higher the gas value of a transaction, faster it gets verified. Sometimes due to increased traffic, there is a lot of competition between the senders, and unknowingly increasing the transaction fee.
Changing Paths
The original Ethereum network was split into Ethereum (new) and Ethereum Classic (original) due to a DAO hack in 2016. In order to prevent the further loss of Ether, the community had to implement a hard fork. Many people, unhappy with the decision stayed loyal to the original Blockchain, Ethereum Classic, while a majority of the key people on the network switched to the Ethereum network. It is less probable that any updates are released on the Ethereum Classic network because all the key developers are on the new Ethereum network. As the hard fork doesn’t support backward compatibility, Ethereum Classic users can’t enjoy the updates of the new Ethereum network.
Closing words
Not a single thing can be predictable in this highly volatile cryptocurrency market. So it would be preferred for us to stay safe from all kinds of irregularities and fluctuations in the outside world.
