What Is Ethereum?

Ethereum, stablecoins, exchange mechanics, and self-custody.

Updated 2026 ж. 21 қаз.GaiaEx Academy Editorial

Бұл сабақта

Ethereum's programmable design
What gas pays for

Негізгі тұжырымдар

1Ethereum is a 'world computer' running smart contracts
2Gas is the fee to execute transactions and code
3Programmability is what sets it apart from Bitcoin

Сабақ қорытындысы

Ethereum is a programmable settlement network.

Mental model

What Is Ethereum?, without the jargon

Ethereum is a programmable settlement network. ETH is the asset used to pay for computation, but the larger idea is that contracts can define shared financial logic.

Ethereum's programmable design
What gas pays for

Mechanics

How to reason about Ethereum

Smart contracts run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Gas prices the computation and storage a transaction consumes.

Validators include transactions and finalize the chain under Proof of Stake.

Ethereum is a 'world computer' running smart contracts
Gas is the fee to execute transactions and code
Programmability is what sets it apart from Bitcoin

Example

Ethereum in a real decision

A user swapping tokens on a DEX pays gas in ETH even if the swap involves two other tokens, because Ethereum is executing the contract logic.

Есте сақтаңызDecision rule: Analyze Ethereum as infrastructure plus asset, not as one isolated token.

Common mistakes

What to unlearn about Ethereum

Ethereum is not only a coin. Judging it only by ETH price misses stablecoins, DeFi, NFTs, rollups, and settlement demand built on top.

Risk notes

Staying safe around Ethereum

High gas, contract bugs, validator centralization, and Layer-2 bridge assumptions affect Ethereum users differently.

Explain what gas pays for.
Connect ETH to contract execution.
Identify one Ethereum ecosystem dependency.

Practice

Make Ethereum stick

Explain what gas pays for.
Connect ETH to contract execution.
Identify one Ethereum ecosystem dependency.

Қайталау

Негізгі терминдер

Bitcoin (BTC): The first cryptocurrency, launched in 2009 — a decentralized, hard-capped (21M) digital money.
Custody: Who controls the private keys. Custodial = a third party holds them; non-custodial = you do.
DeFi: Decentralized Finance — permissionless, composable financial services built on smart contracts.
Ethereum (ETH): A programmable blockchain — a 'world computer' that runs smart contracts and dApps.
Layer 2: A protocol built atop a Layer 1 to scale it — processing transactions off-chain then settling on-chain.

Дерек көздері