Ethereum, ERC20 and DEX

Ethereum

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract -- Wikipedia.com

Welcome to the exciting world of building applications on the Ethereum Blockchain. With Ethereum you can deploy applications or "Smart Contracts" that perform operations and persist state using a decentralized network of computers. Ethereum is often described as a platform for programming digital money. A transaction executes and is confirmed and verified by hundreds of different machines (nodes) distributed around the world. If you want to understand the how blockchains fundamentally work checkout this visual explanation. If you'd like to read more about Ethereum specifically, visit this beginners guide to Ethereum.Now that you have a basic understanding of what Ethereum is and does, let's talk about tokens. Fungible tokens (commonly referred to as ERC20) are simple smart contracts that track the transfer of a unit of account. You can request this smart contract to transfer tokens from your account to anyone else's. Others may also transfer tokens from their account to you. All of these requests are transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and cost a small transaction fee. For more information check out the beginner's guide to Ethereum Tokens.

DEX (decentralized exchange)

A DEX is a decentralized exchange and is essentially a new type of pair matching that allows people to place orders and trade cryptocurrencies without an intermediary institution managing the ledger or controlling user funds. What is a Dex.