“Ethereum aims to take the promise of decentralization, openness and security that is at the core of blockchain technology and brings it to almost anything that can be computed.” – Vitalik Buterin
With dApps, smart contracts and blockchain technology, Ethereum is leading the decentralized revolution. Bitcoin is the world’s first decentralized currency, that operates on a global network of computers outside of central intermediaries. Ethereum gives programmers a platform to develop a decentralized version of just about anything.
Decentralized networks like Ethereum have the power to remove the intermediaries that currently exist between producer and consumer. Let’s take a company like Uber. Uber is a platform that brings people who need rides together with people who have cars. To facilitate this interaction, Uber collects 20% of every ride.
With Ethereum and blockchain technology, there is nothing to prevent a bunch of software developers from writing a dApp that creates a decentralized Uber. Instead of 20% per ride, transaction fees are paid to the network and the driver takes home the lions share of the transaction. Tokens can be issued that represent ownership in the network. Coders who work on improving the network can get paid for their efforts in ownership tokens. Non-technical people can come up with marketing campaigns that spread awareness for the network and also get compensated in ownership tokens. As the decentralized Uber network grows and improves, the value of its ownership token increases, rewarding the people that built it. The result is whats referred to as a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” and theres a strong possibility that DAOs replace a lot of the world’s biggest corporations.
This may sound like a radical concept but blockchain technology enables these kinds of decentralized organizations to exist – Ethereum provides the tools for people to go out and build them.
