Launched in 2015, Ethereum builds on Bitcoin's innovation, with some big differences. Both let you use digital money without payment providers or banks. But Ethereum is programmable, so you can also build and deploy decentralized applications on its network.
Ethereum being programmable means that you can build apps that use the blockchain to store data or control what your app can do. This results in a general purpose blockchain that can be programmed to do anything. As there is no limit to what Ethereum can do, it allows for great innovation to happen on the Ethereum network. While Bitcoin is a payment network, Ethereum is more like a marketplace of financial services, games, social networks and other apps that respect your privacy and cannot censor you.
Ethereum has a native cryptocurrency called ether (ETH). It is purely digital, and you can send it to anyone anywhere in the world instantly. The supply of ETH isn’t controlled by any government or company - it is decentralized and completely transparent. New coins (also commonly called tokens) are issued only to stakers who secure the network. Every action on the Ethereum network requires a certain amount of computational power. This fee is paid in the form of ether. This means you need at least a small amount of ETH to use the network.
Ethereum is not controlled by any one entity. It exists solely through the decentralized participation and cooperation of the community. Ethereum makes use of nodes (a computer with a copy of the Ethereum blockchain data) run by volunteers to replace individual server and cloud systems owned by major internet providers and services. These distributed nodes, run by individuals and businesses all over the world, provide resiliency to the Ethereum network infrastructure. It is therefore much less vulnerable to hacks or shutdowns. Since its launch in 2015, Ethereum has never suffered downtime. There are thousands of individual nodes running Ethereum network. This makes Ethereum one of the most decentralized cryptocurrencies out there, second only to bitcoin.