Purchase Ethereum (ETH) with Swedish Krona (SEK) easily at Switchere and benefit from fast, secure transactions.
Ethereum is a blockchain platform designed to build decentralized applications (dApps) using smart contracts. Ether (ETH), its native cryptocurrency, is the second largest crypto by market cap. It’s used to pay for transaction fees (gas), run dApps, and execute smart contracts. Ether also plays a key role in decentralized finance (DeFi), staking, NFTs, and decentralized exchanges.
Gas is required to execute smart contracts on Ethereum, covering the computational cost of contract operations. Each action within a contract has a gas price, and complex contracts require more gas to execute.
Ethereum enables asset tokenization, allowing real-world assets like property, art, or stocks to be represented as digital tokens. This makes them easier to trade and fractionalize, opening up new investment opportunities.
Token standards like ERC-20 and ERC-721 define how tokens behave on Ethereum, enabling interoperability across dApps. These standards have led to rapid ecosystem growth, allowing tokens to be easily integrated and exchanged.
Ethereum popularized digital collectibles through NFTs, allowing creators to mint and sell unique digital items. Collectibles like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club are examples of Ethereum-based NFTs that have gained massive popularity.
Ethereum’s ecosystem comprises dApps, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and tools for developers. This diverse infrastructure supports decentralized finance, art, gaming, and social applications, making Ethereum one of the most versatile blockchain platforms.
Once you have ETH in a self-custody digital wallet, you can interact with Layer-2 scaling solutions like Arbitrum or Optimism. This involves using a 'bridge' to transfer your ETH from the Ethereum mainnet (Layer-1) to the chosen Layer-2 network. Transactions on these networks are significantly cheaper and faster because they bundle many transactions together and settle them as a single transaction on Layer-1. This makes interacting with dApps and DeFi protocols much more cost-effective while still benefiting from the security of the main Ethereum blockchain.