Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dodi 8238 (talk | contribs) at 10:41, 17 February 2016 (repeated ref; added two secondary source requests). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Ethereum" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Misplaced Pages's quality standards, as the article relies too much on primary sources. Instead of using secondary sources to list the different media organizations that have covered the subject, the sources should be used to support (and possibly expand) the article itself. You can help. The talk page may contain suggestions. (February 2016)

Ethereum Software

Original author(s)	Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood
Developer(s)	Gavin Wood, Jeffrey Wilcke, Vitalik Buterin, et al
Repository	github.com/ethereum
Written in	C++, Go, JavaScript, Python, Java, node.js, Haskell
Operating system	Linux, Windows, OS X, POSIX compliant
Type	Decentralized computing
License	GPL3, MIT, LGPL, et al
Website	www.ethereum.org

Ethereum is a programmable smart contract platform which includes a cryptocurrency called Ether.

Ethereum was initially described by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013, formally described by Gavin Wood in early 2014 in the so-called "yellow paper" and launched 30 July 2015. It is among a group of "next generation" (or "Bitcoin 2.0") platforms. According to Taylor Gerring, the goal of Ethereum is a decentralised and pseudonymous replacement for the World Wide Web: incentivized static content publication (Swarm), pseudonymous low-level messaging system (Whisper), trustless transactions (Ethereum) and an integrated user-interface (Mist).

Timeline

Important events in the development of Ethereum include

• December 2013: Vitalik Buterin released a white paper.
• February 2014: The first open source project. Go and C++ proof of concept builds (PoC1) being released.
• April 2014: A "Yellow Paper" by Gavin Wood with specific technical details not included in the white paper is released.
• July 30, 2015: Launch of the beta (Frontier) Ethereum Blockchain.
• Spring 2016: Launch of public (Homestead) release. This includes changes in the economics (gas) structure of contract execution.
• Early 2017: Launch of graphical user interface (Metropolis).
• Late 2017: Launch of Serenity release, including proof-of-stake, state channels, and other ambitious changes.

Ether

The currency unit of the Ethereum project is called Ether, used to pay for computational services on the network.

To finance development, Ethereum distributed the initial allocation of ether via a 42-day public crowdsale, netting 31,591 bitcoins, worth $18,439,086 at that time, in exchange for about 60,102,216 ether.

Contracts

Smart contracts are programs and protocols to facilitate the automated performance of a contract. Ethereum contracts can be implemented in various languages, compiled into bytecode for the Ethereum Virtual Machine before being deployed to the blockchain.

Every contract is run on every full Ethereum node simultaneously and the result is the consensus of the output. The documentation notes that computation on the EVM is "very expensive" and that "you will not be able to do anything on the EVM that you cannot do on a smartphone from 1999."

Implementations

The following full-node implementations of Ethereum are available:

• Geth, written in Go
• Parity, written in Rust
• Eth, written in C++
• Ethereum J, written in Java
• pyethapp, written in Python
• ethereumjs, written in JavaScript
• ethereumH, written in Haskell

Media

The platform has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Globe and Mail, SiliconANGLE, Al Jazeera, The Telegraph and the Keiser Report.

References

1. Buterin, Vitalik. "The Problem of Censorship". Ethereum Blog. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
2. Buterin, Vitalik (2014-01-23). "Ethereum: A Next-Generation Cryptocurrency and Decentralized Application Platform". Bitcoin Magazine. Retrieved 9 April 2014.
3. ^ Wood, Gavin (2014-04-06). "Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger" (PDF). gavwood.com. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
4. Tual, Stephan. "Ethereum Launches". Ethereum Blog. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
5. Kharif, Olga (2014-03-28). "Bitcoin 2.0 Shows Technology Evolving Beyond Use as Money". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 11 April 2014.
6. Gerring, Taylor (2014-08-18). "building the decentralized web 3.0". Ethereum Blog. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
7. Buterin, Vitalik (2013-12-01). "A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform". Retrieved 16 Feb 2016.
8. Tual, Stephan. "C++ Code+Build FAQ". Ethereum Forum. Retrieved 3 September 2014.
9. "The symbol for Ether is..." Ethereum Forum. 7 June 2014. Retrieved August 14, 2014.
10. Genesis block
11. "The Issuance Model in Ethereum". Ethereum Blog.
12. "Crypto 2.0 Roundup: Block Chain Bloat, Ethereum Completes Presale and a Crypto Football Team". CoinDesk. Retrieved 2015-11-13.
13. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/Ethereum-Development-Tutorial
14. go-ethereum homepage
15. Parity press release
16. Ethereum C++ Client GitHub repository
17. Ethereum J homepage
18. pyethapp GitHub repository
19. ethereumjs homepage
20. ethereum-client-haskell GitHub repository
21. Paul Vigna (28th October 2015). Microsoft to Offer Ethereum Based Services. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
22. Finley, Kurt (2014-01-27). "Out in the Open: Teenage Hacker Transforms Web Into One Giant Bitcoin Network". Wired. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
23. Gray, Jeff (2014-04-07). "Bitcoin believers: Why digital currency backers are keeping the faith". The Globe and Mail. Phillip Crawley. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
24. Cox, Ryan. "Can Ethereum kill Bitcoin with self-executing contracts?". SiliconANGLE. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
25. Nathan Schneider (7 April 2014). Code your own utopia: Meet Ethereum, bitcoin's most ambitious successor. Al Jazeera America. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
26. Soon, the internet will be impossible to control. Jamie Bartlett. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
27. Keiser Report: New Crypto Phenomenon Ethereum. Max Keiser. Retrieved 10 June 2014.

External links

• Official website

• Misplaced Pages articles needing factual verification from Fabruary 2016
• Cross-platform software
• Cryptocurrencies