The fees are called “gas” because they vary depending on the amount of computational power required. Ethereum distinguishes itself from Bitcoin as a programmable network that serves as a marketplace for applications such as financial services, games, social media, voting platforms etc. Some popular applications harnessing the ether network are Etheria, EtherTweet, RaidenNetwork, Tenx, and Gnosis – all of which can be paid for in ETH and are safe from fraud, theft, or censorship. Promising developments in the ETH space have recently started gaining traction. Namely, Microsoft is in partnership with ConsenSys to offer Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on the Microsoft Azure cloud. It is intended to offer Enterprise clients and developers a single click cloud-based blockchain developer environment. Moreover, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and ConsenSys announced a joint venture to create a network of data centers built on the Ethereum infrastructure. ETH has a circulating supply of 116 million units. The ETH system has an unlimited supply, but an annual maximum supply of 18 million units. While Bitcoin has a built-in halving mechanism, Ethereum relies on EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) to control inflation. Ethereum is capable of processing approximately 20 transactions per second with an average confirmation time of 5 minutes.