Ethereum
- Ticker
- ETH
- Category
- Smart-contract platform
- Risk profile
- Established
What it is
The leading platform for smart contracts and decentralized apps — most of DeFi, NFTs and stablecoin activity runs on it or a network derived from it.
Why this risk level
- Large, active developer ecosystem and the deepest liquidity outside Bitcoin
- Moved to proof-of-stake in 2022, cutting its energy use by well over 99%
- Network fees can spike sharply during congestion, and smart-contract bugs are a real risk for anything built on top
A plain-English risk overview for education, not investment advice. Risk profiles describe the asset's own characteristics, not a price forecast — always do your own research before buying.
Other coin guides
Aave AAVEVolatileA decentralised lending protocol where deposits sit in shared pools and borrowers take overcollateralised loans against assets they lock, with interest rates set by how much of a pool is in use.Algorand ALGOVolatileA smart-contract network whose consensus draws a fresh random committee for every block and finalises it on the spot, so the chain never reorganises and confirmations are not a waiting game.Aptos APTVolatileA proof-of-stake layer-1 launched in October 2022 by engineers from Meta's abandoned Diem project, built around the Move programming language and an execution engine that processes independent transactions in parallel rather than one after another.Arbitrum ARBVolatileAn optimistic rollup that executes transactions off the Ethereum main chain and posts the results back to it, so users pay Ethereum-level security costs only once per batch.Avalanche AVAXVolatileA proof-of-stake smart-contract platform designed around fast transaction finality and the ability for projects to run their own separate, application-specific chains.Bitcoin BTCEstablishedThe original cryptocurrency and still the largest by market value, with over fifteen years of continuous operation and no successful attack on its core network.