Ethereum: A Detailed Report on Cryptocurrency and Its Applications

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Ethereum, a leading cryptocurrency, examining its core functionalities, underlying blockchain technology, and applications. The report delves into the concept of smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and the role of Ether within the Ethereum ecosystem. It explores the reasons behind Ethereum's creation, its properties, and potential drawbacks, alongside a comparative analysis of its price trends with Bitcoin. Furthermore, the report investigates the Ethereum network's applications, competitor analysis, and the broader implications of its technology. The report also discusses the future possibilities of Ethereum and concludes with a summary of its significance in the evolving landscape of digital currencies.

Running head: ETHEREUM
Ethereum
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................3
About the Currency:...............................................................................................................3
Block-Chain Technology:......................................................................................................3
Smart- Contract:.....................................................................................................................4
Reason for Creation of Ethereum:..........................................................................................4
Decentralized Autonomous Organization:.............................................................................5
Platform for other Currency:..................................................................................................5
Properties of Ethereum Network:...........................................................................................6
Drawbacks of the Network:...................................................................................................7
Price Trend of the Ethereum Stock:.......................................................................................7
Price Trend of Bit-Coin:.........................................................................................................8
Competitor Analysis with Other currency:............................................................................9
How to use Ethereum Network:...........................................................................................11
Scam in the Network:...........................................................................................................12
Future Possibilities:..............................................................................................................12
Conclusion:..........................................................................................................................13
References:...........................................................................................................................15

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Introduction:
Trade and commerce has played an important role for the development of the global
economy. The trade and commerce started at the initial stage with the use of barter system
which involved the sale and purchase of goods with the exchange of the goods and services.
Thus the currency involved was the exchange of one goods for another. There was no
common currency to value the goods sold. The passage of time led to the use of common
currency in the form of precious metals and coins, which led to the ease of doing business.
However the scarcity of the metals led to the development of paper currency of each
individual economy. Thus, some major currency around the globe were established for the
purpose of business like the US dollar, Euro for the Eurozone, Pound in the United kingdom,
Chinese Yuan and many more other currency. Although with the advancement in technology
and innovation a new type of currency was invented known as Crypto-currency (Narayanan,
Felten, Miller and Goldfeder 2016).
This was developed with the start of the Bit-coin in the year 2009, which was
developed by a still unknown creator known as Satashi Nakamoto. Thus a new era of
currency started which led to the development of many other Crypto-currency known as Alt-
coins. The total number of popular Alt-coins after Bit-coin tune to be around 30, out of which
four of the coins have become inactive. The aim of this report is to understand the usage and
application of crypto-currency for which we have the chosen the currency Ethereum. The
various ways this currency is used and a brief report about the crypto-currency Ethereum is
presented in this report (Hileman and Rauchs 2017).

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Discussion:
About the Currency:
The Ethereum is an application on the internet where various coders can write
application and programmes which are safe and can run easily. The benefit of this platform is
that it is safe from the loss of theft of data by various other users. The currency which is used
in the internet application is called Ether. Thus the users of Ethereum can use this currency to
transfer payments and receive payments in the form of Ether all around the globe. The
Currency is an alternative option for Bit-coin and has to be mined as similar to Bit-coin by
programmers around the globe. The Ethereum is a platform which is decentralized and the
users of the platform can be a part of an open financial system, as well as develop various
application which are of some digital value in the practical world (Fry and Cheah 2016).
The Ethereum network was created by Vitalik Buterin and laid the foundation for this
network in the year 2013. There were total four co-founders for the Ethereum network which
got active in the year 2015. The Ethereum network also uses the block-chain technology
which is used by Bit-coin miners to mine bit-coin. However the miners use the block-chain
technology to mine Ether which is a crypto-currency used in the Ethereum Network. Also
another coin known as the gas is generated by using the Ethereum Network which is used to
pay transaction and other fees (Makarov and Schoar 2019).
Block-Chain Technology:
The block chain technology which was first used in the mining of bit-coin is the same
principle which is used in the Ethereum network. The block-chain is a set of ledger consisting
of all the entries of transaction in a set of block. This block is available with every user of the
block chain, thus there are certain properties of the block chain like,
 They cannot be tampered with easily.

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 They record the transaction between the two parties without the involvement of any
intermediary.
 The block is available with every user of the block chain technology.
 Since the block chain cannot be tampered, data or entries can only be included thus
making the block chain relatively permanent.
 Since there is no central authority controlling the block chain any data update is made
by a consensus vote of the block chain users.
Thus, this principle of block chain is primarily used in the Bit-coin where the users
are limited only to transaction between two parties. In Ethereum the users are not only limited
to transaction but can use the platform for various other purposes (Herbert and Litchfield
2015).
Smart- Contract:
This feature makes the use of Ethereum a relatively unique and different from Bit-
coin. The smart contract is a programme which is written by coders which include various
digital assets which have some value. Thus the purchase and sale of anything which has a
value can be written as a programme and this programme will be running in the background.
This programme is not reversible and hence the concept of block chain is preserved. These
contracts are executed when certain conditions of the contract are met and thus they are
relatively free from any interference which might affect it. All the block chain which are
present are capable of processing such programs or codes. However they limit the user to the
extent to which they can operate, which is not a problem in the Ethereum Network since the
users of the network can create any code and programs which they want and run it in the
network (Eyal 2017).

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Reason for Creation of Ethereum:
Since the block chain are created to serve a specific purpose and for a new application
an entirely new block chain has to be created. Thus as the Bit-coin is used as a payment
platform between peers and any new application has to be created using a different block
chain. To overcome this problem the founder of Ethereum created the network known as the
Ethereum Virtual Machine. Since the creation of a different task would require the user to
expand the function of the existing block chain which would involve a lot of money and time,
thus Ethereum involves creation of potentially thousands of application from the same block
chain. Thus it saves a lot of time and money for the users of the Ethereum Network and it
also incorporates the use of different programming language which is not possible in other
block chain networks (Miraz and Ali 2018).
Decentralized Autonomous Organization:
The removal of centralized control on the operations of the network is an important
feature of the Ethereum Network. Thus organization which are decentralized and operate
without the presence of a leader is created by using a code of program on smart contracts.
Thus the presence of intermediary is removed and the people can own a Decentralized
Autonomous Organization by providing donations. These donations are known as tokens
which give the donation givers rights to vote. Thus the organization keeps on running until it
generates its survival cost as revenue and provides services which are useful to its consumers.
Even the creators of such organization cannot interfere in the activities of the organization,
thus it leads to the transparency of operations (Watanabe, Fujimura, Akutsu and Kishigami
2015).
Platform for other Currency:
The users of the platform can use the Ethereum Network to issue their own currency
in exchange for Ether, a native currency of the Ethereum Network. The Standard ERC20 of

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the network allows the user to issue their own currency or token in a fundraising strategy
called the Initial Coin Offering.
The platform can be used to track and register the ownership of digital assets which
are scarce in nature. As many games are written on the Ethereum Network and some become
very popular, thus the owner of the intellectual property can be tracked using this network
(Atzei, Bartoletti and Cimoli 2017).
Thus the Ethereum Network enables safeguarding the rights of various users and
coders and help it to safeguard their interest. This makes it different from other crypto
currency network.
Properties of Ethereum Network:
The Ethereum network with its platform and the block chain principle different from
other crypto currency has the following benefits like,
 Like other platform of crypto currency require a new block chain to be created for a
new application, the network provides numerous number of operations to be written
on the same block chain.
 The data to the application cannot be changed or altered by any unauthorized user,
thus it protects the application and the data related to the users of the application.
 The application are attached to the block chain if they get approved by a vote by
majority of the users, thus making the application corruption free and free from
alteration.
 The application and the network is coded with enhanced cryptography principle, thus
they are protected from cyber-attacks or hacking attempts.

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 The application once approved and attached to the block chain run continuously
without the need of external support. Thus the application run in the background and
cannot be taken down.
Drawbacks of the Network:
Although the Ethereum network has several properties which is different from other
currency networks. The Smart contract code feature of the network is subject to various loop
holes, like if there is some fault in the code or there is some inefficiency in the code it will be
exploited until and unless the consensus is reached to change the code. Also the code which
are written by coders are humans any bugs or malware in the code can pose a threat to the
entire network and its users. Thus it can lead to a severe security threat to the privacy and
benefits of multiple users around the globe. Also if the code are allowed to be altered by
achieving a consensus goes against the absence of a centralized authority principle of the
platform (Corbet, Lucey and Yarovaya 2018).
Thus these are some of the drawbacks of the network which the Ethereum network, its
application and the users face while using the network.
Price Trend of the Ethereum Stock:
The Ethereum Stock trades at the exchange and has the following price trend over the
years of trading which is highlighted in the graph below,

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Price Trend
Figure 1:
Source:
The Ethereum Stock when it first started trading from the year 2015, has severe
volatile surges and has increased almost 200% in certain trading periods. However the trend
of the stock over the years is in a downward trend indicating a fall in the price. Also the price
of the currency is following a mean reversion property with trading a certain periods with a
positive value and certain periods in negative value (Akira 2018).
Figure:
Source:
The average monthly return of the currency is at 21.137% with the standard deviation
of 58.86%. Thus the currency has a higher return with a high volatility.

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Price Trend of Bit-Coin:
The competitor currency to the Ethereum Stock is the Bit-coin which is the first
crypto currency in the crypto currency universe. The monthly price of the currency has been
taken for the same period of the Ether Currency and is presented in the table below,
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Price Trend
Figure 3:
Source:
As highlighted in the graph the price of the currency is following the mean reversion
property with a continuous trend of rise and then a continuous trend of fall in price. However
the trend of the price is in the decreasing trend from the year 2015 till present (Hirai 2017).
Figure 4:
Source:

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The average monthly return of the currency us at 9.92% and the volatility of the
currency is at 24.01% during the analysis period.
Competitor Analysis with Other currency:
The Ethereum Network has the currency Ether which is used in the network by its
users for completing their transaction. Thus the competing currency to Ether is the QTUM
which is a platform network which has the best properties of both the bit-coin and the
ethereum network. It includes the desirable property of both the networks in its platform thus
is desirable by many developers to use it for their application. The return of both the
Ethereum Network and the QTUM is highlighted in the table below,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111213141516171819202122232425262728293031
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ETH VS QTUM
ETH QTUM
Figure 5:
Source:
Thus as the trend of both the currency shows that the QTUM initially generated high
returns but it stabilized and generated return which is similar to the Ether currency. Thus both
the currency are trending together with almost equal returns (Atzei, Bartoletti and Cimoli
2016).

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The Second competing currency to the Ethereum Network is Ethereum Classic, which
was created after a hacker stole around 50 million ETH coins from its users. This currency is
the creation of the backward block chain of the traditional Ethereum Network. Thus it was
done to rectify the coding mistakes which took place in the initial code and the rightful
owners receive their ETH coins back into their account (Mavridou and Laszka 2018).
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ETH VS ETH CLASSIC
ETH ETH Classic
Figure 6:
Source:
Both the currency are trading at par, irrespective of the previous difference in trading
returns. Thus both the currency are generating the same returns at present.
How to use Ethereum Network:
The use of Ethereum network is simple to use and can be accessed through its native
mist browser. The browser can be used to write various application which are decentralized
and also acts as a wallet where the ETH earned can be stored. Apart from this browser an
extension of Google chrome browser known as the Meta task browser can be used to create
the existing chrome browser into the Ethereum Browser. All this browser can be used by