Ethereum is the second largest digital currency out there at the moment, second only to Bitcoin. Although the price of an Ethereum token has increased and decreased wildly over time, it’s worth pointing out that, on an Ethereum price chart (live charts and prices can be found on Binance, Yahoo Finance and CNN etc), the token is doing very well! As with many other cryptocurrencies, it’s seeing a recent surge in popularity, attributable to any number of different things.

With such a monumental thing increasing in size and nature every day, it’s reasonable to presume that digital transactions overall will be changed to some extent by Ethereum, and what Ethereum can offer to the average consumer. Here, let’s talk about some of the key ways Ethereum may change the future of digital transactions, from customer expectations to overall functionality.

Increased intelligence

One of the key things that separates Ethereum from other cryptocurrencies is the fact that it’s essentially the first blockchain-integrated project that truly harnesses the power of what a distributed system of computer nodes can do. While other projects have certainly allowed for transactions to occur on the blockchain with ease, Ethereum is the first to allow for software to run across decentralized hardware nodes.

For a more understandable frame of reference, consider just one Ethereum token. One Ethereum token can obviously be used as currency, and it can also be used to execute code when a certain condition is met. The token has a built-in smart contract functionality, allowing the holder and any users to do a number of things with each token they possess.

Going forward, there’s a chance that this increased intelligence could be used to achieve any number of things. For instance, after a particular transaction occurs using Ethereum or any other smart contract capable cryptocurrency, the tokens used in that situation may record information about the participants in the transaction, as well as any number of other things designed to help both businesses and consumers to get the most out of the transaction.

Decreased fraud

One of the impressive functions of the Ethereum blockchain is that the chances of any level of fraud occurring are massively decreased per transaction. The reason for this is the same as with any cryptocurrency - the decentralized nature of the blockchain means that an additional or suspicious transaction is far less likely to go through.

With Ethereum, in particular, new blocks are added to the chain through a proof-of-stake system. This means that whenever a new piece of information is generated to be added to the chain or edit some pre-existing information, users on the blockchain essentially get to vote for whether or not that information will be added to the chain. What this means is that if the transaction going through is less than reputable, the voters can decline that transaction’s addition to the blockchain, leading to it simply not going through.

With time and dedicated voting power, Ethereum has constructed a system by which the chances of fraud occurring are much lower than in other currencies.

This has a real chance of impacting the future of digital transactions for a great number of reasons. Most notably, consumers may see the benefits of much lower chances of fraud occurring and thereafter make the change to a new system in which they’re less likely to be ripped off. At the end of the day, no one likes to have their hard-earned money taken from them, and ensuring that doesn’t happen through proof-of-stake is a powerful tool in Ethereum’s arsenal.

Widespread computing power

The distributed nature of Ethereum’s computer nodes means that the computing power available to the blockchain is immense and more than any one computer can achieve on its own. As such, the widespread computing power will be able to perform a great deal more functions than just allowing any given transaction to occur.

On its own, this may not seem like it will have a big impact on the future of digital transactions, but consider how this computer power may interact with the power of large corporations. Essentially, this computer power could give an organization the chance to analyze data much more rapidly using any number of different nodes that they require.

For transactions specifically, this could mean that the information gathered during the transaction process will rapidly be analyzed and tabulated, with the goal of profit-maximizing being core to the goal of these calculations.

In a sense, we already see this occurring on large servers that companies own or lease. Cookies and tracking information follow us around the web to advertise to us aggressively, so the chances of a computing node being used to do much the same thing seems very likely. The pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency means that while the people involved in the transaction may not know one another’s real-life names, they could know a stand-in for that name. Businesses will likely know this stand-in too, and will be able to follow it as it makes transactions across the blockchain.

The rise of Ethereum is far from over, and as it continues to likely increase in popularity, it may well impact digital transactions more generally. Consider how Ethereum and crypto may alter the regular digital transactions that you make.