Charging right behind Bitcoin in terms of market cap, Ethereum jumped to its all-time high of $2,799.61 on April 29 morning, according to Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. A day ago, the value of Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, had gone up by 1.4 percent to $2,706.39.

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The price of Ether has shot up by 260 percent over the last year, higher than the 87 percent rise in the value of Bitcoin during the same period. However, Ethereum's worth is still far less than that of Bitcoin, which was valued at $53,974.11 as of April 29

Why has Ether's price increased?

The surge in Ether's price comes days after the European Investment Bank announced that it had issued 100 million euros in 2-year notes using the Ethereum blockchain.

The rally in Ether comes in the wake of speculation that this digital currency is gaining traction among mainstream financial institutions like Mastercard, JPMorgan and UBS. Market analysts also cite 'rising institutional interest' behind Ether's price rise.

Besides, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are also using the Ethereum platform, reports said.

What's Ether and how it started?

The world's second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum is a blockchain-based software platform. It was launched in 2015. Ethereum is not just a cryptocurrency but also a decentralized app store helping developers to build and publish distributed applications.

Ethereum was founded by eight people but only Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian entrepreneur, is still actively working on the blockchain platform. The other six founders are — Mihai Alisie, a graduate in Cybernetic Economics; Anthony Di Iorio, a Toronto-based investor; Amir Chetrit, a US-Israeli businessman; Charles Hoskinson, Hawaii-based cryptocurrency enthusiast; Gavin Wood, British computer programmer; Jeffrey Wilcke, also a computer programmer.