In 2017, the most popular word in the Google search was “crypto-currency.” And the most popular combination of words was “How to buy Bitcoin?”
Ethereum — one of the most popular crypto coins after Bitcoin — was in the second place. Such popularity was due not only to the good startup base of 2014, but also to the price that during 2017 soared from 15$ in January 2017 to 1,300$ in January 2018. Even the boldest predictions never mentioned such a rise in the currency. All Ethereum holders were expecting to break a big jackpot in 2018, when Ether would be equal in price to Bitcoin.
The economic collapse of the first quarter of 2018 showed the opposite and affected not only such mastodons of the crypto industry as Bitcoin, Ether and Lightcoin, but also less significant currencies which fell well below the waterline. All the long-term investors had been rubbing their hands in anticipation as they did their coin-shopping while it was cheap, including the fans of Ether who had been waiting and are still waiting for Ether to make a jump upward.
Weve got to give due credit to the team of Ether and personally to Vitaly Buterin who have spent so much time and money in vain. Just take an unforgettable project of cryptokitties developed on the platform of Ether, which literally smashed the users brains and became a new epidemic in America and Western Europe. It was an excellent attempt to raise the rate of Ether from 45 billion to 139 billion dollars. The rate rose indeed from 476 to 1,300 dollars. In other words, the price of ETH has grown more than 2.5 times. And at the peak of its popularity a case was recorded where one “crypticat” cost about 246 ETH, which at that time was 117 thousand dollars.
But every stick has two ends: the result of this popularity was the restart of the network and a new question arose about the scalability of the network, which the Loom NetworK team began to solve in January this year. The guys from this promising startup have launched DAppChains — sidechains connected to the main network of Ethereum without overloading it. The Loom platform is absolutely decentralized, but capable of commercial scaling. The DAppChains’ bottom line is that when a developer creates a new program, Loom Network allocates it a separate blocking system connected to the main blockbuster of Ethereum. The concept of sidechains is used in a lot of projects, however Loom Network has its own plan, because its dapp-chain has been created specifically for scaling and relieving the load from the main blockbuster of Ethereum, so developers themselves can decide which operations they want to move out of the main network. Also, a huge respect is owed to the game “crypto-zombies”, also developed on the Ether platform, which teaches ordinary game users the basics of programming and helps create the same games while testing it.
The work is being done, the problem is being solved, but as soon as one small problem resolves, the more important one pops up. How to raise the rate of Ether if its quantity is not limited? As you know, as with any inflation, if there is a lot of money, the cost price falls. The absence of restrictions on the amount of Ether has pleased investors all over the world. The big plus turned into a big minus. Then, on April 1-th this year the head of Ethereum Vitaly Buterin expressed his ideas on limiting the maximum amount of Etherium to 144 052 828 ETH, which is exactly twice the amount included initially in the crowdsale.
This news caused a resonance in the crypto-community. One even thought it was an April Fool’s joke, but as it is known, in every joke there is a grain of joke. It remains a mystery to the uninitiated as to how they will deal with Bitmain Ethereum ASIC, which has a monopoly on crypto currency mining, and whether it will be a hard-fork.Anyway it is immediately clear that the Ethereum team will sit idly by.
The most optimistic predictions for Ether in 2018 are that the exchange rate will reach as much as 4000 dollars. But here is the intrigue — what will the developers come up with? Still, it is clear that you will never get bored …
