Ethereum team has launched Frontier, the first release of the project offering a new website for those who want to build on the Ethereum open source platform.

Last year, Ethereum, a platform offering smart contracts applications built on the blockchain technology, raised money by selling digital tokens ETH. During the first two weeks of the sale the company received over 25,000 BTC from selling over 50 million ETHs.

Ether (ETH) is an internal network currency that can be used to pay for platform utilisation as well as to reward contributors for their services (e.g. for turning their computer into a mining computational node or volunteering to validate transactions). Those who wish to mine ETH, which is similar to bitcoin mining, need to download the Ethereum genesis block with all the transactions from the ETH crowdsale last August.

The Frontier release is targeted mainly at developers and the new website warns about possible risks:

“Exploring the Frontier presents vast opportunities, but also many dangers, and is not for everyone.”

However, the system has been launched publicly and everyone can download the Command Line Interface to start using ETH and execute contracts. Ether can be mined, purchased just bitcoin, or received from another user.

Ethereum also allows users to build their own cryptocurrency tokens with a coin API. Developers can start building their own applications based on the Ethereum network. Projects that already use the network in this way include a contract publishing tool Mintchalk, an authenticity tracking tool Provenance, and a digital navigation and health platform for medical professionals and patients Point Nurse.

Aliona Chapel