What about Ethereum (ETH)?

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Every coin has its pros and cons, and so an unbiased objective take is impossible. Cryptocurrency is a free market of ideas and voluntary involvement, and the best coins must prove themselves in it, including BCH. Readers are encouraged to explore the communities, apps and events that other coins have to offer and hear both sides of the argument. However, as a candidate for being the global reserve currency, other coins tend to have serious flaws that make them a less viable candidate than BCH.

The Bitcoin Cash Podcast is **not an expert in every alternative cryptocurrency, nor able to argue for their merits**. If you think this article is inaccurate or needs adjusting, please help to improve it and submit a PR with your suggested improvements instead of complaining that it doesn't reflect your own opinions or knowledge.

Ethereum is a groundbreaking project that added the ability to make any kind of computer program run on a blockchain instead of just monetary payments.

Ethereum was not opposed to scaling the block size, but because they had an "accounts" based system instead of a "UTXO" system like Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash and because Ethereum can store any general computer code rather than just simple transaction data, larger block sizes could only get them so far. Fees have risen dramatically on Ethereum, and the planned solution to transition to "Eth 2.0" will fragment the interoperability of programs on the blockchain into less secure or exceptionally complicated "Layer 2"s, similar to BTC and the Lightning Network.

Ethereum's original promise that "code is law" was broken in the events of the "DAO hack". A large portion of the Ethereum community had invested millions of dollars of Ether into a smart contract organisation, until a hacker found a way to drain the funds to their private wallet. In this crisis scenario, the Ethereum community decided to roll back transactions on the network and undo the money sent in to the DAO, saving their money but destroying any credibility in Ethereum as an immutable system free from arbitrary interference or censorship. A segment of the Ethereum community that remained committed to honouring the principle of an immutable blockchain split away into a new coin called Ethereum Classic (ETC), similar to how BCH split from BTC (but for different reasons).

Ethereum also suffers some degree of social centralisation around its co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. His ideas are widely regarded in the community, which is betting a lot on his ability to always make the right move through perfect judgement and lack of external influence. If this changed for any reason, the entire community would lack leadership and direction.

Bitcoin Cash has adopted the entire EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) infrastructure with its sidechain SmartBCH, allowing BCH to run everything Ethereum can run at 80x or more efficiency. By isolating this to a sidechain (a separate blockchain which BCH can be moved across to and back), storage space issues do not compound with the main chain like in Ethereum.

Bitcoin Cash is also developing a whole different direction of UTXO-based DeFi beginning with on-chain protocols such as AnyHedge and consensus protocol improvements such as CashTokens.