While Ethereum currently uses proof-of-work they are working on transitioning to proof-of-stake, so I would book the electricity it currently uses as growing pains of a new technology.
So far, the only real “application” of Ethereum is perhaps speculation.
Ethereum currently has real world usages such as https://kleros.io/ that does neutral conflict arbitration.
While Ethereum’s current prediction markets aren’t very good at providing probability for events they will mature and provide information about events that’s valuable.
Once Ethereum switches to proof-of-stake the transaction costs will also go down and projects that currently aren’t viable will become viable.
I’m aware that Ethereum has just announced that they will switch to Proof-of-stake. I hope they succeed, but I am not optimistic about it. If you are patient enough, here are 1580 comments on this topic—https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194586
While Ethereum currently uses proof-of-work they are working on transitioning to proof-of-stake, so I would book the electricity it currently uses as growing pains of a new technology.
Ethereum currently has real world usages such as https://kleros.io/ that does neutral conflict arbitration.
While Ethereum’s current prediction markets aren’t very good at providing probability for events they will mature and provide information about events that’s valuable.
Once Ethereum switches to proof-of-stake the transaction costs will also go down and projects that currently aren’t viable will become viable.
I’m aware that Ethereum has just announced that they will switch to Proof-of-stake. I hope they succeed, but I am not optimistic about it. If you are patient enough, here are 1580 comments on this topic—https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194586