Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second
only to bitcoin in market capitalization.
Ethereum is a permissionless,[b] non-hierarchical network of computers (nodes) that build and come to a consensus on an ever-growing series of "blocks",
or batches of transactions, known as the blockchain. Each block contains an identifier of the chain that must precede it if the block is to be considered valid.
Hyperledger (or the Hyperledger Project) is an umbrella project of open source blockchains and related tools, started in December 2015 by the Linux Foundation, and has received contributions from IBM, Intel and SAP Ariba, to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. It was renamed Hyperledger Foundation in October 2021.
Notable frameworks
A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need for trusted intermediators, arbitration costs, and fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.
Legal status of smart contracts
A smart contract does not typically constitute a valid binding agreement at law, although a smart legal contract is intended to be both executable by a machine and legally enforceable.
Smart contracts are not legal agreements, but rather means of performing obligations deriving from agreements that can be executed automatically by a computer program or a transaction protocol,
such as technological means for the automation of payment obligations or obligations consisting in the transfer of tokens or cryptocurrencies.
A private blockchain is permissioned. One cannot join it unless invited by the network administrators. Participant and validator access is restricted. To distinguish between open blockchains and other peer-to-peer decentralized database applications that are not open ad-hoc compute clusters, the terminology Distributed Ledger (DLT) is normally used for private blockchains.
UsesBlockchain technology can be integrated into multiple areas. The primary use of blockchains is as a distributed ledger for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin; there were also a few other operational products that had matured from proof of concept by late 2016.
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a specialized type of cryptographic token representing something unique, like a domain name, a limited-time skin for a video game, or other digital properties owned by a user. Therefore, the NFTs are not mutually interchangeable, meaning an individual might trade ownership of a domain name for ownership of a rare character skin or a cryptocurrency.
Applications of NFTs
