Vitalik found help in more developers and his idea conducted to the creation of the first Blockchain capable of running computer programs on top of the Blockchain; the name of this unprecedented Blockchain is Ethereum, a global network of computers forming one supercomputer.

Basically, a Blockchain is a supercomputer whose hardware is alive and can evolve to a huge size of thousands of times the dimensions of Google, Facebook or any other machine in the planet. This hardware is not in one specific geographical location, but distributed all over the world. In Vitalik’s words, Ethereum Network is “the fabric for a kind of new Internet infrastructure”, an amazing new kind of World Wide Web. By implementing decentralized computing power in real world, Ethereum gave birth also to a new kind of decentralized software that could be used to run small, medium-sized and big businesses in an autonomous way without a central authority to be in permanent control: “smart contracts”.

A smart contract is a computer program capable of computing any kind of the commonly known functions we see in applications on computers, smartphones or tablets.

These special computer programs are used, nonetheless, mostly to function as arbitrators between two people —or two parties— who want to transact with each other or who need to establish an agreement, being specially efficient for those cases in which the transaction or agreement involves the need of the two parties to trust each other and when the transaction between the two parties involves money.

The smart contract allows the two parties to transact without any kind of intervention of a third party offering the highest level of security and trustworthiness.

A smart contract is a software living inside the Blockchain. It can do the job of a company’s managers, or the job of decision makers at a bank or even the job of a government. These are third parties who intervene when two people want to agree on things and do business. The Blockchain eliminates the subjectivity and in-transparency of these trusted third parties.