Quote from: GyuTae Byun on May 07, 2018, 02:03:29 PM

The Crypto correction of early 2018 saw Bitcoin fall a bit from its pedestal of nearly $20,000, yet this year Ethereums sharding progress show dApps will solve major scaling hurdles this year, and by default then, 2018 is the year of Ethereum.

If Bitcoin is like crypto gold, a choice digital asset, crypto is moving ever closer to utility coin and smart contact transactions which means Ethereum is the crypto platinum.

Ethereum, the second-largest by market value, was up 2.5 percent over the past 24 hours at $933.24. However in spite of Ethereum being at forefront of the smart contract movement for blockchain smart contract platforms, its founder also has some ideals.

When Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted recently that hes boycotting this years Consensus conference after CoinDesk since CoinDesk has been linked to fraudulent projects, it shows (unlike Coinbase) that some of the young people at the forefront of Crypto still have ethics and ideals that young decentralization advocates can relate to.

Sharding Could Remove Blockchains Speed Bottleneck
Bitcoin is limited to ~37 transactions per second, Ethereum to 715, but not forever. The sharding proof of concept means the blockchain is starting to evolve faster and the scalability bandwidth issues could be solved before 2020.

Ethereum
Some call sharding the biggest breakthrough since the invention of smart contracts. You can read the proof of concept here. Different kinds of levels of nodes can improve efficiency.

Ethereum sharding chain cross-linking.
It doesnt really matter what the price of these things are, it matters what the blockchain becomes.

The primary goal of implementing sharding is massive scalability improvement.
Bitcoin is the DOS, Ethereum is the Windows
If Bitcoin is the DOS of blockchain, Ethereum could be the windows OS. Theres some chance that Ethereum fails as a first-mover smart contract platform and another one succeeds thats more technically sound, scalable and secure. Its too soon to say which one might rival Ethereum, but there is some competition.

Blockchain has meant that thousands of new companies are sprouting up with highly innovative business models and even ICOs being regulated and facing rating systems, ICOs are still doing well in 2018 compared to 2017. While Bitcoin and crypto investing has been systematically suppressed by states, criticized by bankers investors, crypto has become in 2018 entirely a mainstream proposition.

Bitcoin is the Yin, Ethereum is the Yang
If Blockchain is the yin, the negative potential of what blockchain could become, Ethereum is the yang, the positive development of smart contracts that could change fundamentally how the web works and how transactions and trust evolve.

Ethereum sees itself as a global infrastructure computing paradigm thats open-source, decentralized and can build on a trust that could prevent fraud, censorship or third-party interference.

Its hard to imagine Ethereums price not ending 2018 on an all-time high given the important work it is doing. In early January Ethereum hit an all-time high price of $1,417.38, before dropping to well below half that price in the Bitcoin correction (not a bubble).

Sharding will likely evolve from very simple levels of parallelization, to then gradually be developed until Visa levels scaling. VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second.

Visa-scale transaction levels or beyond may be necessary for Ethereum as the crypto platinum to reach its full potential and impact the lives of global citizens at large. In time it takes for this to occur, most central banks will have created converted their fiat money systems to fiat-blockchain digital money. While Japan enjoys features of Bitcoin transactions that is offered in retail and services there at an accelerating rate, Ethereum as a dominant smart contract platform would be much more transformative globally.

ethereum are proving they work hard in order to sort scaling issues. Once it's sorted, they will be stronger than ever, which should be highly reflected on prices and market cap