Why don't you pick a newer series then? To learn e.g. javascript, or python, or django? It's a few hours of following along a videos and some weeks experimenting on something as a project of your own.

I believe it is the transaction fee, which the successful miner gets. In previous videos he mentioned that transaction fee depends upon the complexity of a transaction, so it makes sense to infer that the more complex/resource intensive the transaction is (like running smart contracts), the more the miner is awarded. We are essentially paying miners to process and verify our transactions. If anyone knows better please feel free to correct me!

iirc mining is the way new Ether is minted, just like Bitcoin. That's why when Ethereum goes PoS the currency will become deflationary.

@@sweiscool Do not know the exact mining process of Ether, but I've got some understanding how bitcoin mining works. When it's time for a node to calculate a bunch of transactions, the node adds/creates + 1 transaction which includes payment to yourself. It literally means the node assigns itself a fixed amount of btc otherwise known as a reward, creates a header block and starts a calculation process. Additionally, this amount of bts, let's say, 15 is being controlled and gradually being reduced (by half) by the btc internal protocol (the amount of fee used to be bigger and eventually through the time it will be smaller). I believe the same process's with Ether.