1. Introduction

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based computing platform that features smart contract functionality. It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. Ethereum’s internal cryptocurrency, the Ether, is used mostly by developers to pay for transaction fees and services on the Ethereum network. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum can be traded around and used to establish fiat currency (USD, Euro, Yen, etc). Ether can also be used to compensate for mining efforts and services rendered. But unlike Bitcoin, it has many multifaceted applications. It is crucial for individuals to stay up-to-date on the latest news regarding Ethereum. The reason for this is discussed in the next subsection.

1.1. Overview of Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs on smart contracts. A smart contract is basically a self-operating computer program that occasionally eliminates the requirement of having any third party. Smart contracts eliminate the risks of availability, fraud, and regulation as the contract terms are written directly into codes, with the contract executing once these terms are met. Ethereum uses blockchain technology to enable users to create a smart contract with anyone in the world after paying some Ether. Ether is the cryptocurrency that an Ethereum user should have in possession to run operations on the Ethereum network. Ether can also be transferred to any other cryptocurrency at any exchange. The smart contract platform has been predicted as a revolutionary technology with the potential to make a change in many industries. One example given by Ethereum’s co-founder, Gavin Wood, was the smart contract as a means to autonomous organizations and creating a way for corporations in the future without company managers or workers. He believes these DAOs have the potential to resolve some political issues and reduce corruption.

1.2. Importance of Staying Updated

There are many sources of news online covering Ethereum. Here are several forums with threads discussing the latest news, opinion pieces, and debates on the changes happening in Ethereum. This particular source is ideal for gaining an understanding of the various perspectives the community has on each change. Using Reddit, one can subscribe to specific Ethereum-related subreddits to have updates on their front page. It is important, however, to maintain a level of skepticism with what is read in forums, as it is often hard to sort fact from opinion without in-depth investigatory research.

Being sure to stay up-to-date with the latest innovations, improvements, and news within the Ethereum world is crucial. The speed at which Ethereum grows is on par with revolutionary technology, and to stay indifferent is to possibly miss what could possibly be one of the greatest developments in our lifetimes. The community of both enthusiasts and developers could be entirely in opposition to these new changes. If Ethereum is to have any hope of following through with its current plans of transitioning to a proof-of-stake and potentially worldwide currency, it has to have the support of the majority of this community. Some of the recent “scandals” involve the possibility of a hard fork to reverse the Ethereum network after a large sum of currency was lost on an amateur-developed project. The network is divided on the decision to carry the mistake as an eternal reminder of the consequences of hasty smart contracts; others believe a broader decision has to be made.

2. Recent Developments

The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade has been the topic of much conversation in the crypto community over recent months. This is a major event for the Ethereum platform and has the potential to change the mechanics of this cryptocurrency. There are a number of changes that are being implemented as part of this upgrade, but the main change is from a proof of work consensus to a proof of stake. This will change how new Ethereum are created and how transactions work. The main goals of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade are to make the Ethereum platform more scalable, more secure, and more sustainable. Making the platform more scalable is a crucial change, as the high usage of the Ethereum platform has caused it to become slow and expensive to use. The scalability issues were highlighted in early 2021, when the popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms caused a sharp increase in Ethereum gas prices. This sparked criticism from investors and marked the first time more Ethereum was burned than created in a month. Another event that highlighted the need for a more sustainable Ethereum platform was the release of the Ethereum-based Cryptokitties game. The popularity of this game caused delays in Ethereum transactions and revealed that the Ethereum network was not equipped to handle large increases in traffic.

2.1. Upgrade to Ethereum 2.0

In spite of this, Ethereum 2.0 has been a work in progress since Ethereum’s delivery in 2015. It represents the backend of a significant and multifaceted technological revamp of Ethereum’s blockchain. The reason for this redecorate is to increase the scalability, protection, and sustainability of the Ethereum blockchain. The essential mechanics of this redecorate involve changing of Ethereum’s consensus protocol from proof of work to proof of stake. This will permit Ethereum to be more scalable and sustainable by means of staking, which reduces the strength and power intake of the network. An improvement to Ethereum’s scalability is the introduction of shard chains. This is a way of splitting the Ethereum blockchain into smaller, more potential blockchains. A couple of transactions can be processed at the same time, increasing the throughput of the network. Finally, the upgrades aim to improve the security and decentralization of the network. With the improvement to proof of stake and the implementation of effective signature facts, Ethereum will be more protected from bad actors, and the shard chains will increase Ethereum’s resilience to attacks by spreading transaction history across shards. Overall, Ethereum 2.0 represents a massive overhaul of the current Ethereum infrastructure, and the transition is expected to last several years.

2.2. Adoption by Major Companies

Around the fall of 2020, some of the biggest names in the technology and business sector showed their support for blockchain and cryptocurrency by investing in Ethereum. Many believe that these investments came as a result of the companies’ fear of missing out on an emerging technology that could revolutionize the way we do things on the internet and in the global economy. One example of this is the recent investment by Jack Dorsey’s Square, Inc., which purchased $50 million in Ethereum. Another way major companies are showing support for Ethereum is by utilizing its technology to improve certain aspects of their business. One example of this is UBS Group’s use of an Ethereum-based platform to improve the data quality of the price feeds that go into their systems. This was UBS Group’s first time using an Ethereum platform for production, indicating they consider Ethereum’s blockchain technology a reliable solution.

2.3. Price Movements and Market Trends

FundStrat Global Advisor, Tom Lee, assured in a tweet that this is not the end of the bull market for Bitcoin and it shares a similar busy pattern when compared with the 2017 bull run. He had sold the lowest allocation of Bitcoin since March and set a new target for this year-end at 40,000 US dollars. Even though the price for Bitcoin and Ethereum had dropped, he had predicted a massive injection by institutions and retail by buying Bitcoin and stocks due to the optimistic future prospects of the economy this year. James Quinn, managing director at Q9 Capital, had also noted that the tightening spread between an offshore yuan and a more restrictive onshore version was driving interest in Bitcoin trading. Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA Europe, also states that the longer-term drivers for high interest in the crypto market remain supportive and this is just a short-term dip. This includes the Federal Reserve’s intention to let inflation run high, continuous government spending and large fiscal stimulus to aid the economic recovery sparked by the coronavirus. High inflation would decrease the value of fiat money and increase the appeal for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as they hold a fixed supply.

So what about the price? In 2020, Bitcoin demonstrated its resilience and most recent moves are fascinating. In a typical volatile manner, the price of Bitcoin dropped from 37,697.64 US dollars to 35,330.86 US dollars in just one night after breaking its two-year high. Ethereum, following Bitcoin, encountered a price drop as well, from 1,155.49 US dollars to 1,104.78 US dollars. Although this is a normal occurrence, some investors are worried about this sudden drop, especially when Bitcoin just began showing signs of big moves in the market.

3. Regulatory Updates

These changes are considered to be highly positive with regards to the growth of cryptocurrencies within Singapore, as clear regulations will give better guidance to entrepreneurs considering token sales as well as access to banking services as the banking and blockchain ecosystem in the country develops. Failure to comply with regulations in certain countries has resulted in companies forgoing bank accounts to avoid being frozen by banks due to legal uncertainties. However, it is likely that stricter regulations will result in certain tokens being unable to achieve compliance, and token sales may have to eventually migrate to countries with more favorable regulations.

Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister has hinted that there could be changes in the way regulations applying to digital tokens are applied. However, it is likely that regulations will only become clearer when the sector sees widespread adoption. It is expected that a similar function to the Howey Test in the US will be used to determine whether specific tokens are considered securities. Since ICOs have raised concerns with many regulators, it is likely that any token sales will likely be met with heavy scrutiny, and failure to comply with regulations can result in heavy penalties.

3.1. Government Policies and Regulations

Although this may lead to some projects being unable to legally continue to operate and forced to give investor refunds, it is generally a positive move as it can prevent future scams and questionable projects from making off with large amounts of money. This will also be attributive to the price of Ethereum, as ICOs had previously dumped the acquired Ether from token sales, which contributed to some of the downward price pressure.

The most significant news comes from the United States, with the SEC recently providing statements that have sent ripples through the entire cryptocurrency community. In a press release on July 25, the SEC issued a report and an investor bulletin stating that certain offerings and sales of digital tokens are subject to the requirements of federal securities laws. This was further supported by the SEC’s decision regarding the DAO, a failed Ethereum-based project that raised over $150 million in a token sale only to lose $50 million to a hacking incident. The SEC investigated the token sale and concluded that it was indeed a securities offering. This provides a clear stance on the legality of ICOs in the US and it is expected that there will be increased regulation and enforcement in the future.

On the opposite spectrum, countries such as Malaysia have decided to adopt a more friendly approach, with the Malaysian securities commission recently announcing that it would be working with the Singaporean government to recognize an ICO token as a security on January 1, 2019, providing proper regulations and rules for cryptocurrency fundraising. This is a promising sign for Ethereum, as token sales have been met with much skepticism and discomfort in the mainstream public due to the large number of scams that have surfaced. The provided regulations and increased investor protection can lead to a more trustworthy environment for token sales, further legitimizing the ICO as a fundraising tool.

The Chinese government has also banned all access to foreign exchanges, including VPNs, with the great firewall expected to be upgraded in the coming months. This greatly affects the accessibility of cryptocurrencies in China and can lead to heavy centralization, with the only available option coming from the release of NEO, a cryptocurrency which has shown to be compliant with Chinese regulations.

Ethereum has seen a recent uptick in government involvement in the past year, affecting all aspects, both positively and negatively. Countries such as China, which have historically shown hostility to cryptocurrencies, have taken a hard line stance by banning the sale of all cryptocurrency assets in the country, sparking massive backlash from Chinese citizens who are concerned for the future of their investments. Startups and established companies have been directly affected, as they will now be unable to acquire funding through ICOs, one of the most popular use cases for Ethereum.

3.2. Impact on Ethereum’s Future

New regulations could have a positive impact on the future of Ethereum, according to experts. There could be restrictions on ICOs, an important funding mechanism for many start-ups. However, the head of the regulatory group at the law firm Cooley recently told a room full of entrepreneurs and developers at an Ethereum Meetup, “Don’t be discouraged. I think for all intents and purposes, you should assume that you will be able to sell your tokens.” This is because the regulation he sees coming is focused on consumer protection. If consumers are well informed and are not being cheated, the tokens will likely be fine. This was echoed by the CFTC’s recent ruling that deemed a specific token, “Bitcoin”, a commodity like corn or sugar and not a security. The token in question was being sold to fund an open-source software project, not to enrich a small group of insiders. The news was received well by the Ether trading community, as it sets a clear precedent for Ether itself, which was originally funded through an ICO. It is clear that governments are becoming increasingly aware of the power of blockchain technologies and are no longer dismissing them as tools for criminals. Companies and consortiums involved in building Ethereum for enterprise have reported that regulators are showing great interest in understanding and accommodating their specific projects. Often times, a new blockchain’s features influence the development of regulation that is custom tailored to ensure that the features can be utilized by the associated parties. This has led to speculation on Ethereum’s part in taking an active role to help the government develop blockchain-related regulation on a global scale. The ability to directly influence the rules that will affect Ethereum’s technology could be invaluable. However, it will be difficult to maintain their decentralized philosophy while getting involved with regulators.

4. Security and Privacy

Around $1.5 million was reported stolen from the coins exchanged during the crowd sale. This was reported to be due to a cybersecurity attack on one person’s computer, as opposed to an issue with the Ethereum platform. There is a weak understanding of the security of Ethereum’s blockchain platform and smart contracts. This was seen in the frustration caused by the reentrancy attack on the DAO, which siphoned $50 million of the coins into a subsidiary account before eventually being corrected. This frustration was expressed by the eventual split of the Ethereum community and platform into two different platforms: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). Overall, the division of coins between these two platforms caused a loss of about 15-20% of the combined market cap of the pre-split Ethereum. The publicized nature of how the hard fork was dealt with is a strength that demonstrated an ability for the Ethereum platform to innovate in comparison to Bitcoin. With Bitcoin, vulnerabilities are often not dealt with until they are exploited. When a solution is agreed upon, there can be difficulty getting the entire community to agree on the implementation of the solution. This can be seen with the ongoing scalability issue in Bitcoin. The situation with The DAO was met with a quick decision that managed to solve the problem very cleanly in terms of how it was rolled back. However, it also demonstrated a lack of readiness for potential issues, as the effects of the fork had not been fully considered and led to a number of problems after the fork, such as getting stuck transactions included in blocks and replay attacks between ETH and ETC.

4.1. Vulnerabilities and Exploits

The Ethereum network has a history of facing smart contract and wallet exploits. These possibilities have been greatly mitigated by improvements in the upgrade flexibility of Ethereum migratory contracts and EVM packages.

Other accounts of vulnerabilities include leaked private keys, which can be exploited to siphon funds from accounts. A weakness in the generatemultisigtransaction API method meant that in the JavaScript console of geth, it would be possible to accidentally generate a single signature transaction when the account was a multisig contract. This would have resulted in vulnerability to specific replay attacks, where an on-the-ball adversary would see the transaction and copy it, making sure that it took effect on both chains. An exploit of the Parity Multi-Signature contract has led to the freezing of $160 million of ether due to the deletion of a code library by a user named Devops199. Significantly, the exposed library that self-destructed was for an airdrop token registration. It was deleted in an attempt to reclaim all or most of the accidentally deployed tokens to the team’s multi-signature wallet. The deletion itself was accidental, as confirmed by a joint statement from Parity and the company involved with the library.

The first severe vulnerability was detected in June 2016 and led to the theft of $50 million. The attacker exploited a recursive call bug in the DAO. The hacker used the same recursive function to siphon money out of the DAO into a child DAO, but for every iteration, the exploited amount would be added. Multiple soft and hard forks were considered with the aim of trying to recover the funds.

4.2. Measures to Enhance Security

With an understanding of the nature of its own creation, the Ethereum team has made claims that it would be welcoming of criticisms that could highlight potential security risks in the system over time. Already, Ethereum is self-aware of some security concerns and they have made plans to mitigate these risks. One such plan is to redesign the Ethereum hashing algorithm to use ProgPOW. ProgPOW is a new hashing algorithm that is built to level the playing field in terms of hardware efficiency. This is in response to the prevalence of AMD card GPUs that currently lie in the dominant range of hardware that could be used to perform a 51% attack. By making ProgPOW the new hashing algorithm, it becomes much less economically viable for a 51% attack to be executed as the cost to obtain the equipment to do so becomes significantly higher. In an update during May 2019, it was stated that the algorithm was “widely accepted as a positive community effort, ProgPOW audit and roadmap are being considered by the EF for inclusion in the coming mid-July hard fork”. Moving forward, Ethereum is to have a strategy for combating the inevitability of future unknown security concerns with a process referred to as stateless clients and it will be an ongoing shift in the way Ethereum is stored and executed. Stateless clients aims to shift a portion of the burden of storing earlier blocks from the network to the clients themselves. This is to allow for lighter networking requirements, which would in turn make network attacks more costly to perpetrators.

4.3. Privacy Enhancements

When looking at privacy in Ethereum in the past, the huge concern has been over the transparent nature of the blockchain. If you make a transaction, not only can someone trace your transaction, but they can also see the details of what that address was involved with. This is a dramatic shift from current economic systems since it adds a level of traceability that is quite unique to Ethereum. Whether we like it or not, there are many use cases where having a traceable record is detrimental. Enter zkSNARKs. Pronounced “zero-knowledge snarks,” here is a succinct overview given by its creators. “In zero-knowledge proof protocols, one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true. Suquet et al. extended zero-knowledge proof protocols to perfect zero-knowledge proof protocols in the mid-90s.” This technology is quite complicated, but it essentially allows for the proof of a transaction to be verified without disclosing any information about the details of the transaction.

5. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a concept that is difficult to explain in a single sentence. It’s an entire ecosystem of finance, recreated on decentralized ledger technology. It is hard to imagine what one could achieve by combining traditional banking services with blockchain technologies. Firstly, it offers an alternative to every financial service in existence; more ways will undoubtedly result in more migrations of capital from the traditional finance system into DeFi. In the future, almost all money could be expressed and moved onto a blockchain, at which point it becomes far easier to track and can be split into smaller pieces when integrated with smart contracts. This will also make it possible for anyone with a smartphone to access financial services. Any application built in the open and permissionless environment of the internet is superior to its private and permissioned counterpart, providing the theory that traditional finance can be recreated with significant improvements.

5.1. DeFi Applications on Ethereum

Debt and lending within the traditional banking system are two of the more straightforward applications of finance. One party lends an asset (be it money or something else) to another with the agreement that the borrower will repay the lender in the future. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender keeps the asset. With debt and lending on the blockchain, the idea is to create a trustless system where contracts are executed automatically with no need for enforcement by a third party. Debt and lending platforms can be built by creating smart contracts with terms that automatically lend an asset to someone if certain conditions are met and, in some cases, create a collateral pool to secure the debts. This application is still somewhat nascent, but there are a variety of Ethereum-based debt and lending projects, such as Dharma and MakerDAO.

Just as a reminder, the primary goal of DeFi is to do the same things as the traditional finance system, but without relying on central hubs like banks and governments. In order to accomplish this, there are a variety of DeFi applications being built on Ethereum, including debt and lending platforms, prediction markets, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

5.2. Risks and Rewards of DeFi

First, to address the rewards of DeFi on Ethereum. With traditional banking and financial services, interest rates are very low and are sometimes just enough to mitigate the effects of inflation. Ethereum DeFi provides a world of different interest rates on all sorts of different cryptocurrencies and lends them to diverse parties. The interest rates that one can acquire begin with single percentages and extend to triple percentages. For a simple example, if you lend out $1000 with a 3% interest rate overthe course of a year, it is a very small amount of extra money. However, with Ethereum DeFi, lending a certain cryptocurrency over a specified time period has the potential to net high interest. This is because cryptocurrency is seen as a high-risk loan, which the interest rate reflects. In a CNBC article, Aave CEO Stani Kulechov commented on how different DeFi services even have the possibility of providing near 20% interest rates on certain cryptocurrencies and is so bullish that they are considering taking DeFi wages. The drastic difference in potential interest rates from those of traditional banking is something that can entice and benefit many. Next, one the primary rewards of cryptocurrency trading is the opportunity to buy and sell various cryptocurrencies in order to gain profits off trading price differences. Whilst a large portion of trading is speculative and can cause losses of funds, successful trading can be extremely lucrative. The cryptocurrency market does not sleep and is active 24/7, 365 days a year, meaning opportunities to make a plethora of different trades at all sorts of different times. Traditional financial markets have varying levels of activity dependent on the region and operate in specific time frames. This adds an extra layer of excitement and potential gains within cryptocurrency trading. With Ethereum DeFi, trading of cryptocurrencies can occur on decentralized exchanges vs the centralized exchanges of the cryptocurrency issuer and can also involve leveraged trading on loaned assets. Leveraged trading can provide hefty increases in gains or losses and is an additional high-risk, high-reward trading method. DeFi has continued to provide the opportunity to trade in exciting new ways and has a high attraction to many traders.

5.3. Future of DeFi on Ethereum

Exponential increase of the Ethereum price Another consideration for the future of Ethereum is the potential for an increase in value. While investing in Ethereum today might not guarantee of a substantial payoff in the immediate future, there are a number of factors, including network development, updates, and market demand, that could contribute to a significant increase in the price of Ethereum later down the track. As noted, the price of Ethereum today is $173.93 USD. This is a significantly reduced price compared to its all-time high of $1,432.88 USD on January 13, 2018. While the price of Ethereum has struggled to reach these heights in the ensuing years, there is hope for a future return to—or even increase from—this all-time high. An increase in the value of Ethereum offers significant gains to current investors and is also likely to attract further interest from new or prospective investors in the future.

Volume of Ethereum The volume of Ethereum traded is an indication of the interest in the cryptocurrency. High interest and large volumes of trade increase the investment potential of Ethereum. A greater volume of Ethereum also furthers the probability of widespread adoption and use in the future. Presently, a total of $16,108,441,391 USD has been traded for the ETH/USD pair across major exchanges over the last 24 hours. While this is a reduction from the preceding 24 hours, the total volume of Ethereum regularly exceeds $20,000,000,000 USD. This displays a consistent level of interest in the buying and selling of Ethereum and predicts a continued high rate of trade in the future. High trade volumes of Ethereum are further indication of the digital currency’s market presence and its ongoing potential as an investment.

As speculation on the future of Ethereum grows, the price potential of the token becomes a prominent consideration for investors. When assessing the current and future investment potential in Ethereum, it is important to consider the total market cap of the cryptocurrency. At the moment, Ethereum’s total market cap stands at $18,803,162,974 USD and ranks as the number 2 cryptocurrency on the market. This ranking is significant as it verifies the presence of Ethereum within the digital currency market and the likelihood of its continuation (or improvement) on this standing in the future. While no digital currency has secured a position as a viable long-term investment, Ethereum’s consistently high market cap provides a level of assurance to investors in terms of potential future returns.

Ethereum Price Today The price of Ethereum today is $173.93 USD, which has increased by 5.54% (3.29%) over the last 24 hours. The total number of ETH coins in circulation stands at 108,086,496 and $67,872,445 USD have been traded for the ETH/USD pair across exchanges over the last 24 hours. Market cap & rank

6. Smart Contracts and DApps

Fungible Tokens (AKA units of currency) and non-fungible tokens (unique items such as Cryptokitties) can also be created as smart contracts with a standard set of functions that other DApps can utilize. The fact that smart contracts can be both complex and trust-minimized makes them an ideal solution for many problems posed by the DApp ecosystem.

Smart contracts can be used to automate a wide variety of tasks on the Ethereum platform, leading to many of the features above being implemented in the form of smart contracts. ENS is a notable example of a suite of smart contracts being used to implement a decentralized version of a core feature. In this case, it’s the core features of DNS and the user-facing contracts that make the system easily accessible. Other examples include the Augur Prediction Market, the Golem Decentralized Computing platform, and various games, including the FOMO3D lottery.

A very simple example of a smart contract might be the following agreement between two parties: “When Bob sends data to this contract, it will store the data and send $100 worth of Ether to Alice”. In this scenario, the smart contract is acting as a type of multi-signature wallet. It has built-in agreement enforcement provided by the logic of the contract, and it can facilitate a transaction between two parties using the power of the Ethereum blockchain.

Smart contracts and DApps are both areas where Ethereum has made significant progress since its initial release. A smart contract is an event-driven program that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Often depicted as self-executing computer code, smart contracts were designed to automatically carry out the terms of a contract when certain conditions are met. Prior to Ethereum, smart contracts were used in a few scattered instances, most notably in Namecoin. However, they were generally difficult to implement and almost exclusively non-reusable.

6.1. Notable Smart Contract Deployments

Some smart contract deployments on Ethereum have also encountered high interest. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, which are a new type of organization represented by code and executed on the Ethereum blockchain, have gained attention. The first experiment of this was a simple but controversial token known as the DAO, which stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. A smart contract was created to act as a venture fund. It allowed investors to purchase tokens and then use those tokens to vote on proposals. A certain percentage of the tokens a person owns is equal to the same percentage of the voting power. The main goal of the DAO was to give investors voting power on how the funds are spent. The DAO came to an abrupt end when an unknown person exploited a vulnerability in the code that allowed them to siphon $50 million worth of ether into a child DAO. This, in turn, caused a divide in the Ethereum community. The majority agreed on a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain to restore the lost funds. But a minority believed that the blockchain should be immutable under any circumstances. This caused a rift in the Ethereum community and eventually led to the hard fork, in which the minority kept the original Ethereum blockchain and called it Ethereum Classic. Although the DAO was a failure, many lessons were learned, which ultimately make future DAOs more secure and efficient.

6.2. Popular Ethereum DApps

An excellent way to measure the success and viability of the Ethereum blockchain, smart contract, and DApp implementation is clearly by the sheer number of DApps that are both deployed on the network and in progress. By following Ethereum’s DApp project tracker, we can see that there are currently 1176 DApps in various stages of development. The most popular category for these DApps is games, with 408, followed by an even 200 in development for marketplaces and 195 DApps for gambling platforms. In a distant fourth place is the DApp category for social networking platforms, which currently has 75 in development. The vast number of DApps in progress and planned is a clear indicator of the confidence and momentum in Ethereum smart contracts and DApp development. Additionally, this tracker doesn’t account for the many DApps and DApp-related platforms in development that act as sidechains or utilize Plasma. A summary of several DApp ideas that have been put forward and discussed within the Ethereum community can be found in the 380 Ethereum DApps 2017 year in review. This brainstorming document includes a vast array of DApp ideas, with a good chance that we will see many of these being actively developed during 2018 and the coming years.

6.3. Improvements in Smart Contract Technology

Several projects are under development that seek to improve the existing capabilities of Ethereum smart contracts. Rootstock is a smart-contract peer-to-peer platform built on the Bitcoin blockchain. It aims to facilitate near-instant Bitcoin transfers between two parties. Upon release, the platform will support a Turing complete Rootstock Virtual Machine which will be backward-compatible with Ethereum smart contracts and allow existing Ethereum Decentralised Applications to migrate over if desired. The main benefit seems to be in the security and decentralization of the Bitcoin blockchain, as it provides the power of Turing-complete smart contracts to Bitcoin with the added use of the Ethereum-like public blockchain. Project Alchemy is a framework for building smart contracts in Haskell. By using Plutus—a language that is purely functional and an embedded DSL in Haskell—and formal verification, Rob describes how they prevent failures and write code that meets its specifications. He states that smart contracts are too big a risk to execute in an environment where the cost of mistakes is so high and believes that Ethereum is facing a last-mover disadvantage. The first mover in smart contract technology was Bitcoin with its provision of trustless transactions; however, its language is limited and not Turing complete. Alchemy seeks to move the smart contract space to a more principled and higher level of abstraction, which will attract developers who want to prove correctness in their code. He considers that a critical mass of developer mindshare is necessary and available opportunity for such a thing to occur. The success of Cardano’s dependently typed smart contracts will provide that mindshare, albeit in a competitive environment.

7. Scalability Solutions

Other than plasma, the advantage of sharding has ceaselessly been the most predicted in light of the way that Buterin first made open his examinations a few years ago. In his own words, sharding is a thought that can empower the Ethereum blockchain to truly scale to being arranged for pleasingly different solicitations without giving up the decentralization properties and decentralized nature on which the Ethereum biosystem was engineered. By using techniques for social event explicit exchanges on “shards,” that are get-togethers of exchanges on a separate new development, the weight and focal points of the exchange can be gobbled up and isolated between every single one of those in the new development, taking into consideration new turns of events of the present existing blockchain component to disregard the part and strategy that enters progress with very related trades. This will accordingly begin to fabricate the throughput of the structure since each square will, starting at now, have a couple “sub-chains” worth of exchanges. At first, shard chains will be neighborhood sidechains that are later understood and objectified into remarkable new development.

As a result of its 2017 Community Fund, the World’s Army (a development arm of the undertaking driven by extra-prepared Ethereum sponsor Dr. Gavin Wood) is eventually following ahead with “plasma”, a thought proposed by author Vitalik Buterin in view of crypto cash “Bitcoin’s” Lightning Network. The Plasma Framework is Ethereum’s course of action for an escalated Ethereum blockchain game plan that can accept altogether more noticeable measures of exchanges every ensuing without surrendering any decentralization properties using a sharp get-together of capable contracts dependent with the Ethereum Blockchain. The regulatory theory joins two unmistakable kinds of squares between root squares and kid hinders. The root on the Ethereum rule chain contains the root of a Plasma chain and duties of the movement and can be asked for against the Ethereum rule chain. Kid Plasma squares confer to a ton of exchanges and can be made sense of utilizing Merkle roots against a root square to effectively pack the exchanges. At whatever point there is a situation on the Plasma chain, anyone can convey the last formated kid square and re-impact the majority of the movements which were not contested.

7.1. Layer 2 Solutions

As noted in the Ethereum Research and Development Roundup 2, the various different solutions can be applied to different applications within Ethereum. Though this article will not go in depth in each of the solutions, it is important to remember that any improvements offered by layer 2 solutions will only add to the value proposition of Ethereum and its applications. All solutions offer massive scalability increases, with many coming close to theoretical maximums for blockchain systems. With its ability to scale, security offered by the Ethereum network, and the value the new solutions will add, layer 2 solutions are the most promising method to ensure that Ethereum becomes the global decentralized network for money and finance that it aims to be. Given that the only real competition to Ethereum as of now are less secure smart contract platforms and 2nd layer solutions being used on Bitcoin,.

When considering scaling solutions for Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin states that “if you want 1000x gains, you can’t do that on layer 1, only layer 2.” Vitalik’s suggestion of using layer 2 solutions showcases the extent to which they can increase throughput on Ethereum. A layer 2 solution is basically a system that sits on top of the main Ethereum chain and bases its security on the Ethereum network. The general idea is to move the majority of processes off-chain and only interact with the Ethereum main chain in the events of opening or closing a payment channel. This will significantly increase the speed and efficiency of transactions and smart contracts on Ethereum with little to no compromises on security. There are many different types of layer 2 solutions. Vitalik wrote an in-depth article explaining them and the implications they have for Ethereum.

7.2. Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs)

One area of unique uncertainty around scalability for Ethereum is the issuance and issuance-minimum of staking rewards in the upcoming Proof of Stake (PoS) system. While both of these are inherent in PoS under a wide range of conditions, there are alternate possible worlds with faster issuance and/or lower required participation for a given level of network security by any traditional measure. Both of these factors have complex effects on economic security and sustainability that can be difficult to reason about in advance. An EIP to change issuance would normally refer to a specific annual issuance targeting some level of security, although such a proposal might be framed as a target for base fee that the protocol should attempt to maintain via minor issuance changes. The best known public analysis of issuance, probably now slightly out of date with respect to specific figures but still directionally relevant, is this report by Carlson, 2017. The higher level of issuance analysis as a mechanism for achieving target per-unit direct user cost in the presence of endogenous transaction demand is an under-explored topic of potential high impact. Overall, this is an area where ongoing research and community discussion are more likely to produce consensus on the right questions to be asking than immediate answers.

7.3. Impact on Network Performance

Increasing block sizes will only alleviate the problem somewhat. Once the number of transactions using cryptocurrencies increases to the point where block sizes should be increased on a regular basis, this will lead to centralization pressure, as any increases in block size can only be validated by a small number of nodes. Other solutions include Proof of Stake, which will decrease the power used in performing block validation; however, this has only been tentatively scheduled for Ethereum and is still many months away from being implemented. Other more complex and less well-understood solutions, such as sharding, may increase the transaction capacity; however, it will be quite a long time before they are implemented and the effectiveness of these solutions is still largely theoretical. Overall, while the recent increase in transaction capacity for cryptocurrencies is positive, it will not mean much until the transaction capacity stops being massively outperformed by demand.

8. Community Updates

To collect the latest updates about how the Ethereum community is doing, we need to interpret the totality of circumstances. Many people tend to think it’s all about price, but actually, it is not. The senior developers and community in this space are still cracking on to bring decentralized applications to the public so that understanding of what cryptocurrency really is would be more widespread. Although, of course, these are just words in the end, we have seen the latest hits in that area, with Cryptokitties being quite popular. The developments are what people should be aiming for and chatting feedback with the state of the cryptocurrency space right now. There are lots of good things happening to Ethereum these days on the development side that are much appreciated for their in-depth analysis. And we hope for them to continue.

8.1. Events and Conferences

Quarter 2 and 3 of 2019 saw a continuation of a trend from last year, with Ethereum projects and the broader community hosting fewer standalone events. Instead, we see more Ethereum content featured at conferences, reflecting industry consolidation on doing real and meaningful work. Ethereum content at events is not just by EF or by those working on ETH 1.x, but also by teams working on ETH 2.0, and parts of the talks are focused on the technical details. Topics covered included stateless Ethereum, Eth 2.0, Plasma and general scaling, privacy, zero-knowledge proofs and rollups. In the following list, events and conferences are divided by whether they had Ethereum research or client presentations, and a selection of ones with key content is detailed. Trinity Tech published a term paper for an Ethereum blockchain game tournament, with Cryptokitties as the medium. Session and video links are included throughout, where available. Event organisers and groups have generally been very good at both recording and releasing content, helping the community to source and learn from valuable material. Videos are always a good way to catch up on missed content.

8.2. Developer Community Initiatives

Developer initiatives have been very effective on the Ethereum blockchain lately. The largest event was most definitely the announcement of the Ethereum-funded ‘Decentralized Application Venture Fund’ facilitated by Joe Lubin of Ethereum/ConsenSys. This fund will provide a lot of support for budding entrepreneurs and provide them with the resources they need to succeed. The project is still in its early days and looking for further leadership and management; however, the ecosystem is developing rapidly. The Ethereum team has also been working hard on increasing the base-level of understanding of Solidity amongst developers from outside the Ethereum community, coming from languages like JavaScript, Python, etc. To help bridge the educational gap, a Solidity documentation group has been formed to construct educational resources on Solidity as well as the Ethereum Virtual Machine. This will not only help developers already involved in Ethereum but also entice more developers of other languages to make the switch. The global interest in developing on the Ethereum platform is at an all-time high due to recent scaling and public understanding of the Ethereum roadmap. This is certainly the case in Asia and other parts of the world, where there are individuals who would greatly benefit from being involved in Ethereum but are not confident in the English documentation. In light of this, community member Terence has reached out to begin developing a Chinese Ethereum documentation team to bridge the language gap and draw more developers into the Ethereum ecosystem.

8.3. Community Feedback and Discussions

In the blockchain community, feedback is paramount. Ethereum needs to know about any problems its users are having and any possible innovations the community would like to see. This information is invaluable and if too little of it is gathered, the integrity of the platform could be compromised. There has been a lot of disagreement in the past about how much weight each type of user’s feedback should be given, such as a token holder versus a developer. There is no conclusive answer to this question. However, in many cases, token holders will make a formal proposal (which does require a deposit of ether to prevent spam) and then the developers will decide on how to execute this. This is seen as the best approach so far, given that at times it is the developers who have the best understanding of the implications of changes that the token holder may not have considered, so it is important to bring the two sides together.

9. Future Outlook

Casper and sharding are the expected and long-awaited upgrades for Ethereum. A full transition to proof-of-stake is expected by the end of 2018, which would involve a significant evolution of the Ethereum blockchain. It has the potential to solve many of the problems that Bitcoin is currently facing with its scaling issues and also be much more environmentally friendly as an algorithm. It will also provide a more predictable and lower variance reward for current miners while also securing the network with a process that eventually removes the need for mining. Sharding is the process of dividing the network into different partitions called shards, which contain states and transaction histories. By doing this, the current load of the network can be divided between the different nodes, which should result in increased transactions per second capacity for the network. Phase one of sharding is expected to be delivered by the end of 2018 and fully winding up by year’s end 2019. This will be critical to making POC a reality, and the longer-term fundamental scaling changes may actually end up being more significant to the ecosystem than the shorter-term transitions.

9.1. Upcoming Upgrades and Roadmap

The future changes are also mentioned in the Ethereum core development meetings, and there are good summaries of these on Reddit. These can explain changes on a more short-term basis and provide a good understanding of what is happening right now. An example of a Reddit summary can be found here. It is important to stay up-to-date over the next few years and read into these changes if you are invested in Ethereum.

There have been various Ethereum roadmaps created previously; some are outdated and with the conception of Ethereum 2.0 will come new roadmaps. The current and most up-to-date roadmap for Ethereum 2.0 can be found on the following link:. This is a very in-depth explanation of the changes Ethereum is looking to implement. Unfortunately, the daily Ethereum doesn’t have the time to explain each change, so this is a good source for any die-hard Ether fans.

As mentioned earlier, Ethereum is in a transition phase and is attempting to change from a “store of value” to a functioning ecosystem. It is often said that “code speaks louder than words,” and the Ethereum development team is doing just that, implementing the changes that they are talking about. There have been three phases which have been highlighted (non-officially) by Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum team in the journey to Ethereum 2.0. Phase Zero (Beacon Chain) introduced PoS and the Beacon Chain, Phase 1 will introduce shard chains to increase scalability, and Phase 1.5 will implement the shard chains onto the mainnet. This sounds good in theory and on paper, but how do they plan on implementing it? This is where the Ethereum roadmap comes in.

9.2. Potential Challenges and Opportunities

potential challenges for Ethereum are clear. The development team has blindsided the community with statements claiming that Proof of Stake was just around the corner, only for Vitalik to release a blog post outlining a vastly different future to what was initially expected with Proof of Stake. If Ethereum is unable to provide a stepping stone for miners until the release of Casper, then it is likely that a large portion of the mining community will switch to more promising cryptocurrencies or just stick with Ethereum Classic. This is also highly dependent on the difficulty bomb, which is actually forcing a move to Proof of Stake. Failure for this to happen will lead to a lack of development on the original Ethereum chain as Ether is created at a far slower rate with Proof of Stake, and miners slowly move their hashing power to the new chain caused by a split. Another potential challenge was enabling a refund for The DAO investors. This has caused controversy in the Ethereum community, leading to a hard fork to return all funds to a refunding contract and moving the Ether to a recover DAO account. This has essentially given Ethereum a bad image, providing a solution to a problem that not everyone was happy with. An immediate dump of the refunded Ether crashed the price of DAO and of Ether. The DAO then sucked up around 15% of the total Ether supply to only miserably fail after. This has left a long-lasting effect on the Ethereum price, confidence, and credibility. Refunding the DAO has had a severe backlash, as detailed in the great Reddit post about the state of Ethereum here.

9.3. Predictions and Speculations

It is also an attempt to distance away from the slandering perception of ICOs as a means of capitalizing on cryptocurrency and its associated volatility and risk, and the potential gains or losses on the altcoins will be far greater than their contemporaries using fiat. This speculative transfer and excess gains or losses are largely due to the valuation of the ICO in relation to Bitcoin. Given that ICOs are not going anywhere, this relationship will likely continue to augment the price of Ethereum.

Price: the price of Ethereum will be very difficult to assess in the future due to the multitude of changes that impact its price. The price of Ethereum is tied to its development, which has an intricate relationship with the success and failure of their implemented ideas and changes. The price of Ethereum has also become tied with the rise of ICOs, which has had a significant impact on the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Usually, after an ICO, the assets are liquidated into a more stable asset like Bitcoin or traditional fiat. This is because the newly formed development teams are used to the fiat standard, and transferring to fiat from Bitcoin is easier than using altcoins.

First impression: the fluctuating and sluggish price, along with lackluster updates and developments, have created a sense of disillusionment and cynicism among Ethereum investors and enthusiasts. The general sentiment appears to be that many are “over Ethereum.” However, this opinion does not necessarily imply a true future prognosis or trend. Let’s take a look at some predictions and speculations.

10. Conclusion

The overall view of this research is to know the specific language that was introduced mainly for writing smart contracts and its advantages and drawbacks. The main scope of this research is to know the current language which has been used to write the smart contracts and to find a better language than the current language to write the smart contracts. As blockchain is an emerging technology, there is a need to develop a code in the best way to enhance the technology; hence, this research plays a vital role in making the smart contract more effective. And also, after finding a better language, there are many smart contracts that have already been built using the current language so it is also important to know the work around for those contracts to change the language. And the final conclusion is to prove that the current language solidity will not be the last language to write the smart contracts and also the better language that has been suggested will be very helpful in building the smart contracts. By using the correct language to build the smart contract, we can build a very effective smart contract. And also, the role of language in building the smart contract has been compared in many aspects, with example, making it clear that a better language can be built to write a smart contract. Hence, using effective language to write the contract will improve the efficiency and reliability of the contract. Lastly, in the research, we have suggested the better language in which the smart contract should be built and also explained how each and every feature will be useful on building the smart contract. This will give a clear idea of how the contract will be built using that better language. Hence, this research has given an overall idea to change the current language to a better one, and it has achieved its goal by proving that solidity will not be the last language to write the smart contract. Through this research, we have proposed a new language for the smart contract and also compared the features of the proposed language with solidity in order to prove that our proposed language is very effective in writing the smart contract. We have given the syntax of the proposed language for better understanding. The proposed language is good in all aspects, and its features are very useful to build a smart contract. Our proposed language has the capability to build an effective smart contract. On the other side, Solidity is also quite a good language to build a smart contract, and it is the only language for Ethereum to build a smart contract.