What Is The Smallest Denomination of the Ethereum Cryptocurrency?

By Prashant Jha

Given that Ethereum is such a popular blockchain network for enterprise use and that Ethereum cryptocurrency is currently the second largest in the crypto market (as per market capitalisation, based on data listed by Coinmarketcap), it is no wonder that people would be really interested in this particular crypto. Thinking of Ethereum, have you wondered what is the smallest denomination of the Ethereum cryptocurrency?

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If you actually have, then look no further as we are here to answer that question for you. We will take a look at what constitutes the absolutely smallest unit of the Ethereum cryptocurrency and try to understand what it is, how it works, and what the basic structure really is.

Wei: The Smallest Unit of The Ethereum Cryptocurrency

The smallest unit of the Ethereum cryptocurrency is called Wei. It is such a tiny part of the Ethereum cryptocurrency system that you get one Ether (currently priced at $174.98, at the time of writing) from 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Weis, put all together.

This means that if you put 10 to the power of 18, and have that many Weis, you will end up with just one Ether, that is valued at less than 200 dollars in the market.

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What is the Need to have Wei?

Since the Ethereum network sees numerous transactions of varying valuations occur quite frequently, it needs to have extremely small units of its facilitating cryptocurrency ready so that the network can always keep running, even for the slightest or smallest of transactions.

Therefore, to sustain all the blockchain smart contracts and dApps that are run on the platform, it is absolutely imperative for the network to have a tiny unit such as Wei.

Wei was apparently named after a person called Wei Dai, a cryptography enthusiast who routinely pushed for the proliferation of privacy-focused technologies within the finance market, especially through cryptocurrencies.

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Prashant Jha

As a content writer Prashant believes in presenting complex topics in simple laymen terms. He is a tech enthusiast and an avid reader.

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