# High-level Overview ## What is Ethermint Ethermint is a high throughput PoS blockchain that is fully compatible and interoperable with Ethereum. In other words, it allows for running vanilla Ethereum on top of [Tendermint](https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint) consensus via the [Cosmos SDK](https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/). This allows developers to have all the desired features of Ethereum, while at the same time benefit from Tendermint’s PoS implementation. Also, because it is built on top of the Cosmos SDK, it will be able to exchange value with the rest of the Cosmos Ecosystem. Here’s a glance at some of the key features of Ethermint: * Web3 compatibility * High throughput * Horizontal scalability * Transaction finality Ethermint enables these key features through: * Implementing Tendermint's ABCI application interface to manage the base Blockchain * Leveraging [modules](https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/tree/master/x/) and other mechanisms implemented by the Cosmos SDK * Utilizing [`geth`](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum) as a library to avoid code reuse and improve maintainability * Exposing a fully compatible Web3 RPC layer for interacting with the system The sum of these features allows developers to leverage existing Ethereum ecosystem tooling and software to seamlessly deploy smart contracts which interact with the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem! ## Next {hide} Learn about Ethermint's [architecture](./architectures.md) {hide}