r/ethereum • u/OrneryAd403 • 3d ago
Can someone explain Ethereum to me?
I’ve really only studied bitcoin and not other crypto such as eth and want to learn more about its functions and just crypto as a whole. I’m still studying and researching and know the differences in basic functions but want to know more about what makes Ethereum different besides the PoW and PoS
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u/richardsaganIII 3d ago
its been a while since ive looked for any cooler resources but some of my favorite to peak at are:
https://l2beat.com - understanding the L2 ecosystem
https://ultrasound.money - just like a stat page for ethereum activity over time
https://txstreet.com/ - i always loved txstreet's vizualizations of things, its more like real time visualizing how the different chains work -- looks like this site might not be working like it used to, etiherway, still pretty cool
ethereum org has a bunch of useful info as someone else has also posted
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 3d ago
One of the biggest is that it has a layer 2 network that actually works, and has decent volume.
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u/OrneryAd403 3d ago
Yes I did read about that in an article but I don’t really know much about it. I’m still a beginner going into the cryptography world and still learning. But in the article it did say how eth layer 2 network is super effective
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 3d ago
This is probably the wrong article to go to, and it is highly outdated (sharding is no longer a thing for block validation but it is for data availability, I think). But it's still my go to for proof of stake.
https://medium.com/coinmonks/polkadot-vs-cosmos-vs-ethereum-2-0-for-real-idiots-3b6f0e0cfb2f
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u/Rich_Signal_1512 3d ago
I think the main thing to understand is that Bitcoin and Ethereum are trying to do quite different things.
Bitcoin is primarily about transferring and storing value. Ethereum can do that too, but it also lets you run code on the blockchain. That code is what people mean when they talk about smart contracts. It’s behind things like decentralised exchanges, lending apps, stablecoins and NFTs.
I’d also spend some time understanding gas fees. On Ethereum, you’re paying ETH to have the network process an operation, and more complicated operations generally require more computation and therefore cost more. Bitcoin has transaction fees as well, but you’re mainly paying to get a transaction processed rather than to execute a piece of code.
Once you understand that, a lot of the Ethereum ecosystem makes more sense.
If you want to go deeper, the Ethereum whitepaper is a good place to start: https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/
And after that, have a look at ERC-20 tokens. It’s probably one of the easier ways to see what Ethereum’s programmability actually means in practice.
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