Programmable money
Ether (ETH) is the native asset. Smart contracts let you write rules that move it without a middleman.
What is Ethereum?
Decentralized
Thousands of validators run the network. No single company can shut it off or rewrite the rules.
Open by default
Every contract is auditable. Anyone, anywhere, can build on top without asking permission.
How it works
Proof of stake
Since The Merge in 2022, validators stake ETH to propose and attest blocks. Energy use dropped roughly 99.95%.
The EVM
The Ethereum Virtual Machine runs smart contracts deterministically across every node. Same input, same output, everywhere.
Gas
Every transaction pays a fee in ETH (gwei). It compensates validators and rate-limits the network.
Layer 2s
Rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync batch transactions off-chain and post proofs to L1, making fees cheap.
Milestones
Ecosystem
A small slice of what people build on Ethereum.