OKX Blockchain 60 Lessons | Episode 34: What Impact Has Ethereum Brought?
Hello everyone, I'm Xiao K. Today we're going to talk about: "What Impact Has Ethereum Brought?"
Many people don't understand why Ethereum is the project with the greatest impact on the industry after Bitcoin, or why Ethereum is considered the creator of Blockchain 2.0. The reason is that Ethereum is an innovator—it was the first to apply blockchain technology to other industries and to find new directions for the blockchain space.
Before the emergence of Ethereum, blockchain product applications were very limited. Aside from Bitcoin, there were only some "altcoin" projects whose source code was very similar to Bitcoin's, meaning blockchain technology had essentially made no substantial progress. It wasn't until Ethereum appeared that this fixed pattern was broken.
So what did Ethereum do? Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's founder, proposed building an operating system-level platform similar to Android or iOS using blockchain technology. Ethereum's core has two aspects:
On one hand, at the underlying data management layer, Ethereum built a decentralized database using the PoS consensus mechanism, giving users ownership of their own data rather than having it controlled by centralized third-party institutions, thereby creating a truly public network infrastructure.
On the other hand, at the application layer, Ethereum provided a programming language allowing developers to create blockchain applications (dApps) of varying complexity tailored to their needs. These applications can be social, trading, gaming, and more. The core of blockchain application development is smart contracts. Smart contracts are a technology that defines rules through code methods—once the conditions of a "smart contract" are triggered, the code is automatically executed by the program.
This model brought two very important impacts. The first was freeing blockchain from the limitations of cryptocurrency and achieving complete independence, because Ethereum proved that blockchain's approach to data management has its own unique advantages: traceable and immutable data, and the ability to establish trust between users without third-party involvement.
The other impact is that Ethereum enabled a leap forward in blockchain technology application. Because the combination of smart contracts and the underlying decentralized database can fully bypass third-party institutions through technical means, allowing direct user-to-user relationships and solving the trust problem. Therefore, any activity that requires trust as a foundation can utilize the Ethereum platform.
Since then, whether it's applications of smart contracts by financial institutions like banks and cross-border payment providers, or research in data infrastructure by public institutions like hospitals, logistics companies, and governments—all signify that Ethereum has made the commercialization of blockchain technology a reality.
If we say that Bitcoin—providing new ideas and technical means for value transfer—represented the era of cryptocurrency, i.e., Blockchain 1.0, then public chain projects after Ethereum represent the Blockchain 2.0 era, greatly expanding blockchain application scenarios and making commercial blockchain applications a reality. That's why we say Ethereum is the first blockchain project to open the door to Blockchain 2.0 and bring it to the world.
Overall, as Ethereum has developed to this day, it has had its highs and lows, been praised and also faced controversy, but it has always stayed on the path of being a "smart contract platform," continuously iterating without ever straying. Perhaps one day in the future, Ethereum will truly fulfill the platform dream it has described.
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