Wybo Wiersma – a 40-year-old Oxford University graduate – has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison after scamming over $2 million in crypto from unsuspecting victims. Following his arrest in 2019, the Dutchman was extradited from the Netherlands back to the United Kingdom (UK) in 2021. Following a five-year investigation by the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU), he pled guilty on January 26 to the Oxford Crown Court. A Five-Year Investigation As reported by…
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain platform that enables the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). It was developed by Vitalik Buterin in 2013 and launched in 2015.
Ethereum is based on the idea of a decentralized world computer that can execute arbitrary code in a trustless manner. Its programming language, called Solidity, is used to write smart contracts that can be deployed to the Ethereum blockchain.
Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein are stored and replicated on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ethereum is also a platform for creating and deploying decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). A DAO is a decentralized organization run by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. It has no central authority and operates on predetermined rules encoded into smart contracts.
In addition to being used for creating smart contracts and DAOs, Ethereum (ETH) is also a platform for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and for building and deploying a wide range of decentralized applications (DApps).
The Role of Ethereum
Ethereum plays several roles in the blockchain ecosystem. Some of the critical roles of Ethereum are:
- Smart contract platform: Ethereum is a platform for creating and deploying smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein are stored and replicated on the Ethereum blockchain.
- Decentralized application platform: Ethereum is a platform for building and deploying decentralized applications (DApps). DApps are decentralized applications built on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning that any single entity does not control them. DApps can be used for various purposes, including financial applications, voting systems, and supply chain management.
- Initial coin offering (ICO) platform: Ethereum has also been used as a platform for initial coin offerings (ICOs), which are a form of crowdfunding used to raise funds for new cryptocurrency projects. In an ICO, a new cryptocurrency is created and sold to investors in exchange for ether (the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain).
- Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) platform: Ethereum is also a platform for creating and deploying decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). A DAO is a decentralized organization run by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. It has no central authority and operates on predetermined rules encoded into smart contracts.