【The Road to Innovation in Cryptocurrency】Ethereum's Innovations

The Road to Innovation in Cryptocurrency

1. Ethereum's innovations 

Satoshi Nakamoto opened Pandora's box and released hope and the devil. What is hope? What is a devil? Graham once said: "Stocks are voting machines in the short run, but weighing machines in the long run." In the fourteen years since Bitcoin came out, the top cryptocurrency projects have stood the test of time, and their coin prices can undoubtedly reflect the value of the project. Analyzing the gains and losses of these projects will be instructive to those still on the road. 

1. Ethereum's innovations 

Ethereum's market cap ranks second on Coinmarketcap. The Ethereum team is the team that understands cryptocurrency best, and they have made many pioneering contributions. 

Ethereum was born in a competitive environment

No one is easy. When Bitcoin came out, there was no competition in the market, and the problem Satoshi Nakamoto faced was that no one understood him except in the cypherpunk circle. The money-making effect changed everything until the Bitcoin exchange appeared in the second year. Ethereum did not cause a sensation when it came out. It is an ordinary project among many projects. After all, Bitcoin is the focus of the market. In addition to Bitcoin, Litecoin, BitShares, Futurecoin, Blackcoin, etc. are all ahead of it. Today, Litecoin barely ranks 15th, and the others are missing. Only Ethereum ranks second because the market gradually recognizes its innovation. 

Back in 2013, at that time, Vitalik was just a young boy, but his thoughts were not young. In November of the same year, the Ethereum white paper was published. Vitalik said: "This first draft is the culmination of several months of thinking and work in the field of 'cryptocurrency 2.0'." Cryptocurrency 1.0 refers to Bitcoin, and they hope to surpass it and become 2.0. What should this 2.0 look like? It can be seen from Vitalik's statement that he believes that Ethereum is an upgrade of Bitcoin and overcomes the shortcomings of Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin was spent for 15 years. and Vitalik is a member of the Bitcoin community. He only spent more than two years of attention, practice time, and a few months of thinking to launch Ethereum. Obviously, improved innovation is easier. However, his thinking has influenced most of the follow-up blockchain projects. 

Tens of thousands of projects in the same period did not stand. Why did Ethereum stand up? It profoundly understands Bitcoin and has carried out all-round innovations and improvements. The name of the Ethereum white paper is: "Next Generation Smart Contracts and Decentralized Application Platform," which shows how it differs from Bitcoin. Let's analyze the improvement of Ethereum in combination with Bitcoin: 

Ethereum is a platform; Bitcoin is not 

Bitcoin is an innovative currency issuance project in human history, and it is challenging to understand it without the foundation of cypherpunk. Ethereum is an innovative financial platform in human history, and this pain point is accurately grasped. Because the traditional financial industry only has projects but no platforms. Ethereum is developing faster than Bitcoin because it is closer to application and easier to understand. Most cryptocurrency early-stage projects use cryptocurrency to imitate traditional financial projects for improvement, without the height, vision, and thinking of the Ethereum team and without breakthroughs in concepts, methods, and solutions. 

Ethereum is a decentralized application platform with actual controllers 

Bitcoin is a decentralized project with no actual controller; however, Ethereum has a controller, which many cryptocurrency people have criticized, and it is said to be a centralized project. It is the inertia of human thinking to use one's inherent knowledge to evaluate a new thing and easily deny it. The bookkeeping and ledger model of Ethereum is roughly the same as that of Bitcoin, and the actual controller plays the role of project improvement and ecological maintenance. Ethereum is different from Bitcoin, and many other projects have entirely applied the logic of Bitcoin but have failed. Does an ecological platform need a team for ecological maintenance? Bitcoin has a project maintenance team; it has no ecology and does not need to be maintained. The mind of the Ethereum team is very clear. In addition to project maintenance technicians, there is also an ecological maintenance team. Go your own way no matter what others say. 

The actual controller is not anonymous

The inventor of Bitcoin is anonymous, bringing a wave of anonymity. Ethereum is an ecological platform. To continue to develop, is it more credible to be anonymous or to be more credible with a real name? Obviously, the real name is more credible. Therefore, whether to be anonymous depends on the project's needs. Generally speaking, real names are better than anonymity. How can anonymity gain the right to speak under mutual competition? Judging from the top ten cryptocurrency projects, except for Bitcoin, the other founding teams are not anonymous, which says it all. 

Maintaining the ecology requires money—the role of setting up a foundation

Bitcoin does not have a foundation, but Ethereum does. Moreover, Ethereum clearly stated that the foundation is a non-profit organization, and the fund is used for ecological community maintenance and project incubation. The development of the ecological community has played a vital role in the development of Ethereum. If you look at the annual report of Ethereum, the money spent on staff salaries is very small. 

Very clear development path and community decisions

In response to accusations of centralization, from the very beginning, Ethereum has disclosed its development stage and goals, such as "frontier," "homeland," etc., and consciously accepts the supervision of the community. The most exaggerated approach of Ethereum is from Proof of Work (POW) to Proof of Stake (POS) consensus. Doing so would cost a lot of miners a lot of money, and this decision was also passed at a community meeting. It's funny to think about killing you and asking for your consent. For the understanding and application of community, Vitalik leads the world today. 

Ethereum changed to an account model 

Bitcoin's ledger does not have the concept of an account; it is composed of addresses one by one. Such addresses are inconvenient for smart contracts. The Ethereum account is the same as people's understanding of daily accounts. All your money is in one account, but the disadvantage is that he only needs to transfer money to you once, and you will know how much money is in his account, which sacrifices user privacy. It is easier to drive an account with a contract than to drive many addresses. There is no right or wrong here; what to do should be determined based on your needs. Although Bitcoin now has a BRC20 protocol similar to the Ethereum ERC20 protocol, since it is not an account model, it isn't easy to use smart contracts to drive addresses, so it is not easy to implement. 

Changes in Ethereum packaging time 

Ethereum takes about 12 seconds to package a block, and Bitcoin takes about 10 minutes. Because Ethereum is a platform, the transaction volume is much larger, and Ethereum is prescient. For the Proof of Work (POW), the time chosen by Ethereum is already the limit, but it is still difficult to meet the needs of the trading platform. Subsequent blockchain projects have chosen other consensus methods to improve speed. 

Upgrade of Ethereum 2.0 

Proceeding from reality without sticking to the constraints of predecessors' practice is the characteristic of the development of Ethereum. Ethereum 2.0 replaced the consensus method with the equity consensus (POS), and the market opposed it very loudly. Satoshi Nakamoto's view on the ledger structure of Bitcoin is: "0.1 is consistent". The Ethereum team doesn't care about the market's opposition and makes major changes through the community. From a bookkeeping perspective, Ethereum makes sense. They used the proof of work (POW) to complete the issuance of Ethereum and used the POS method to maintain the ledger. The most significant advantage is that it reduces the cost of bookkeeping. In centralized projects, bookkeeping is almost free. Because it is unilateral bookkeeping, the cost of multi-party bookkeeping must be higher than that of unilateral bookkeeping, which is determined by the bookkeeping structure. 

Finding a Use for Ethereum 

There is no other way to make money in Bitcoin except for trading. After the POS replaces the Ethereum POW mechanism, the Ethereum can be mortgaged to make a profit. Is this the right way to make money? The market sees it differently. But no matter what, they dare to think and have the courage to break through. Among the new concepts on the market, ICO, DeFi, NFT, and DAO are all new attempts made on Ethereum. USDT has also successfully tried on Ethereum. Vitalik provides opportunities for creative young people to cross the class. 

Deep understanding of incentive 

When the Ethereum project was launched, there was public crowdfunding, and an interesting incentive mechanism was adopted to encourage those willing to participate in advance. In the first two weeks of the sale, 1BTC could buy 2000 ETH, after which the price showed a linear change pattern, and finally, each BTC could buy 1337 ETH. The graph below shows the price of ETH denominated in BTC to show the discounted price of ETH at the beginning of the crowd sale and the increase in the price of ETH from the 14th day of the sale to the 36th day. Now, one Bitcoin is about 16 Ethereum, and Ethereum has increased by about 125 times compared with the initial issue. Incentives are one of the secrets of Bitcoin's success, and it's a small matter that Vitalik has mastered them. 

on-going spokespersons 

The big V of cryptocurrency is like a meteor; only Vitalik is still here. There are some excellent projects in cryptocurrency, but there are no spokespersons. These projects have seen that Bitcoin has no spokesperson. They forgot that Satoshi Nakamoto had been in customer service for 2 years, and then he was still doing publicity in the "Less Wrong" community. Big V's endorsement and community development should be carried out simultaneously, and Zhao Changpeng is the one who does well in the endorsement. The following article will analyze him and Binance. 

Improve Ethereum Like Vitalik Improved Bitcoin

With the originality of Satoshi Nakamoto in the cryptocurrency, all that remains is to improve and innovate. The above 11 items are the author's analysis of the improvement of Ether, just a hole in one's opinion. That reflects the innovative spirit of the Ethereum team. Starting from the project's requirements, using Bitcoin as a template, improving the parts of the Bitcoin system that are not suitable for the platform, and carefully thinking about the composition plan in advance, rather than simply imitating them, are the keys to the success of Ethereum. If latecomers can improve on the problems of Ethereum and not stick to the dogma of cryptocurrency, there may be a breakthrough.

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