Ether (ETH)
Ether (ETH) is the native cryptocurrencyA cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset des... More of the Ethereum blockchainA blockchain is a shared digital ledger, or a continually up... More and has many of the same features as bitcoinThe term "Bitcoin" can either refer to Bitcoin the network, ... More (e.g., ether is public, peer-to-peer, decentralized, censorship resistant, etc.). One distinction, however, is the method in which miners are incentivized. Instead of blockBlocks hold batches of valid transactions that are hashed an... More rewards and transaction fees (in Bitcoin), Ethereum uses gas, which is a measure of computational power needed to complete a transaction. For larger transactions that take more power, an Ethereum user will have to pay more gas to miners and vice versa.
For block size, Ethereum blocks are capped by the amount of gas each of them can store up. Ethereum is limited by 6.7 million gas limits on each block. The miners can only add transactions whose gas requirements add up to something which is equal to or less than the gas limit of the block. A typical one-on-one transaction eats up 21,000 units of gas.
Currently, ether is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, second to Bitcoin. However, unlike bitcoin, which has a hard cap of 21 million bitcoins, ether does not (yet) have a hard cap limit.
In September 2022, the then-current Ethereum MainnetThe term Mainnet differentiates a realnet/mainnet blockchain... More merged with the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake system. This marked the end of proof-of-work for Ethereum, and the full transition to proof-of-stake set the stage for future scaling upgrades including sharding. The Merge also reduced Ethereum’s energy consumption by ~99.95% More: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/