Many beginners hold Ethereum as a "safe altcoin exposure", without much understanding in its utility or what it solves.
As this is an ETH trading sub, I think it'd be valuable to have a post about the underlying asset. Below is a write up I wrote a while ago in which I briefly explain the value proposition of Ethereum without discussing tokenomics and price speculation.
Enjoy !#
**Ethereum** is the network. **Ether (ETH)** is the native coin.
What the project provides is a platform to build **decentralized apps** or launch tokens on the Ethereum network, called **ERC-20 tokens**.
These are the "coins" that you can swap on DEXes such as Uniswap (for example: Aave, Graph, USDC, etc.). They all have contract addresses in the format of "0x..." and you can provide liquidity on the Ethereum network.
Anyone can launch a token on the Ethereum network, but only those that provide some value or utility will be successful.
Apart from tokens, you can also build smart contracts on the Ethereum network.
**Smart contact** is an executable piece of code that you can deploy to the network. It's like a function in programming, where you can define which functionalities to run when users transact with their addresses.
One or more smart contracts + a front-end (HTML/CSS/JS + web3 libs) to interact with them, effectively create a dApp (decentralized application).
Lastly, for any operation on the network, you pay **gas fees** using the ETH token. I think most of you are already intimately familiar with this concept.
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This is just a general overview to give newcomers a clearer perspective of what Ethereum is and what is value proposition is.
To learn more, you can read about the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, the blockchain trilemma, layer 2s, or dive deeper in the technical details of the Ethereum network, even try to write a smart contract and deploy it on a testnet using the Remix IDE and following the docs. This might be your first step towards becoming a blockchain developer.
