Challenger du Bitcoin, dont elle est largement inspirée, la blockchain Ethereum est celle qui intéresse le plus les milieux d’affaires, qui voient en elle à la fois une version « politiquement correcte » du Bitcoin (sans l’arrière-fond idéologique anarchiste de la cryptomonnaie originelle) et un outil aux possibilités plus larges.

The more complex a transaction needs to be, the more variables there need to be catered for and programmed into a smart contract. It also brings into the frame the issue that there will be events that occur that will require external validation. Enter stage left, the cryptocurrency solution – the idea of oracles.

Specialized computers called “nodes” periodically collect all the transactions and verify that they’re legitimate by checking that the Bitcoins involved weren’t previously spent elsewhere. The set of good transactions over a period of time is called a “block.”