As I understand, the Ethereum project provides an innovative technology for allowing developers to build distributed apps that can insert smart contracts in their blockchain and execute these on their distributed network.
Why do they need a coin for any of this? Couldn't they just have an auction market place where developers bid to execute apps and miners accept bids?
Best Answer
Through the coin:
the miners are rewarded for their work on both confirming blocks and validating transactions, both of them being different.
each person asking for a transaction is paying for it; note that if the Dapp developper wants to make it free for his user, he can do it, but then he has to pay for those transactions.
this coins allows value transfer inside the blockchain, which would not be possible without this coin.
the transaction fees are probably lower this way, as you would have to pay for the market place while still paying for the blockchain.