What is Ether? Ether is a necessary element — a fuel — for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. Electroneum ETN Mining Works more. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations. To put it another way, ether is the incentive ensuring that developers write quality applications (wasteful code costs more), and that the network remains healthy (people are compensated for their contributed resources).

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If you just want to test the technology, you probably don't need real ether. And switch to the Test Network. ZCoin XZC Mining Hash Rate Calculator there.