The Bitcoin symbol is white and placed in the center of a circular background that transitions from gold in the middle to a gray border. The symbol is depicted as a person with a black blindfold, extending an arm to touch a black silhouette of a guide dog on the left. The other arm is holding a white cane with a red tip on the right.

Ethereum and DeFi

In 2015, Ethereum added a general-purpose virtual machine. Bitcoin’s ledger mostly records payments. Ethereum’s ledger can also store programs and run them when someone sends a transaction.

The virtual machine

Those programs are smart contracts. Tokens are one thing a contract can track. The network, not a private server, is the source of truth for what the code did. Smart contracts walks the ladder from a plain token to exchanges, loans, and bridges.

DeFi

Tokens and smart contracts let a market run without one company operating the exchange. An automated market maker, or AMM, is a pool of tokens that prices a trade from a formula. Lending markets pool assets and charge borrowers. Stablecoins are tokens that aim to hold a steady value, often one dollar.

DeFi is that layer: markets made of contracts instead of a single exchange operator. Fees and complexity are the honest downside. A crowded chain can cost a lot to use, and a contract does what it was written to do, including the mistakes.

The documents

Ethereum publishes the network overview. The Ethereum white paper is the design document.

Search tokens

Not financial advice. This page is education, as of September 2026. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell, bridge, stake, or sign a transaction, and it is not a promise about price or yield.