Early Days of Ethereum

Preserving the history and stories of the people who built Ethereum.

The Evolution of Ethereum

Many of you know that the Ethereum platform grew out of the realization that blockchains can go far beyond currency, together with a frustration with the limitations of previous projects. The core idea was simple: a blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete programming language, allowing users to build any kind of applications on top.

Over time, the vision evolved and expanded. The blockchain remains a crucial centerpiece, but it is ultimately only part of a larger vision of "web 3.0" as described by Gavin Wood here: a more secure, trustworthy and globally accessible internet for agreements, finance, auditing, tracking and simple websites and web applications that use decentralized technology to overcome some of the practical, political and technological inefficiencies of previous approaches.

With such an ambitious vision, come some challenges. Right now, the Ethereum project is in a time of complicated transition. Many of the difficult initial work are now behind us. Ethereum now actually exists, and those who were lucky enough to take up Mircea Popescu's offer to buy ETH from him that he doesn't have at a price of $0.12 a piece are welcome to try their best to collect. Today, we can all be proud that the Ethereum developer ecosystem has grown large enough to include major banks, corporations, governments, over a hundred dapps and individuals and businesses in dozens of countries speaking dozens of languages.

At the same time, however, there are some difficult challenges that remain. The core of the problem is simple. Up until fairly recently, almost all of the work that has been done on the Ethereum project has been done by subsidiaries of the foundation. In the future, however, although the foundation and its subsidiaries are going to continue to take on a strong and leading role, it will be the community that will gradually be the primary driver in making it succeed.

First of all, it is indeed true that the foundation's finances are limited. Second, the project's needs have grown. The foundation and its subsidiaries alone simply do not have the manpower to push the entirety of this vision through to its ultimate completion. A highly community-driven model is necessary and essential, both to help the Ethereum ecosystem maximally grow and flourish and to establish Ethereum as a decentralized project which is ultimately owned by all of humanity, and not any one group.

And fortunately, the community has already stepped up. Just to give a few examples, here are a few parts of the Ethereum ecosystem that the Ethereum Foundation and its subsidiaries have had nothing to do with:

  • Augur: a prediction market that has earned $4.5 million in its recent crowdsale
  • GroupGnosis: another prediction market being developed by Consensys
  • Embark: a NodeJS-based dapp development, testing and deployment framework
  • Truffle: another dapp development, testing and deployment framework
  • Ether.camp: a block explorer
  • etherscan.io: another block explorer
  • EtherEx: an Ethereum-based asset exchange
  • The Ethereum Java and Haskell implementations
  • And many more

Actually, the Ethereum ecosystem is maturing nicely, and looks unrecognizable from what it was barely a year ago.

Finances

Let us start off by providing an overview of the Foundation's financial situation. Its current holdings are roughly:

  • 200,000 CHF
  • 1,800 BTC
  • 2,700,000 ETH

Plus a 490,000 CHF legal fund. The foundation's monthly expenditures are currently ~410,000 CHF and starting Oct 1 are projected to fall to 340,000 CHF; a mid-term goal has been placed of 200,000 - 250,000 CHF.

Possible revenue sources include developer workshops, conference tickets and sponsorships, and third-party donations and grants.

Focus

Going forward, the Foundation and its subsidiaries will aim for a more focused approach. An approximate outline of the Foundation's activities can be described as follows:

  • Education
  • Conferences, events, Meetups co-ordination
  • Outreach, marketing and evangelism
  • Compliance and regulatory maintenance
  • Highly targeted core development tasks
  • Research
  • Official protocol and sub-protocol specifications

Transparency

The Ethereum Foundation would like to express a renewed interest in being maximally transparent in its affairs. We are making a renewed push to move conversations from Skype to Gitter where they are more publicly visible and members of the public can more easily participate.

In sum, despite the evidence of growing pains, the state of the Ethereum nation is good, its ecosystem is vibrant, and its future is bright.