Open Transactions was a blockchain-parallel payments system initiated in 2008 by Chris Odom (AKA "FellowTraveler").
Open Transactions was a Chaumian eCash system, like today's Cashu project. With Johann Gevers, Chris co-founded Monetas, a company commercializing the open source technology. Johann was also notably the founder of the "Crypto Valley" group when he moved Monetas to Zug in October 2013. Johann was key to the Ethereum Foundation incorporating in Zug.
Chris was mentioned in the original BitcoinTalk post in January 2014, although his role there was later written out of history, along with many others. He was listed as a team member on the ethereum.org website as a team member from February 2014:
"Chris Odom: Strategic Partner, Developer (Open Transactions)"
He was removed from the Ethereum page by March 2014, so I guess it was a short-lived collaboration?
Chris spoke at the North American Bitcoin conference in January 2014 - the same conference where Ethereum was announced and where the Miami house meetings occurred. Chris mentions Ethereum as a project which will be supported in that stack, so I assume that he was collaborating with the Ethereum team, rather than being part of the Ethereum team per-se:
The proposed technology stack he talks about there is fascinating:
- Open Transactions for payment rails
- Bitcoin as money
- Namecoin for identity
- Bitmessage for channels for "order books".
This proto-Web3 stack reminds me of IBM and Samsung's January 2015 "Project ADEPT", which Henning Dietrich and Paul Brody worked on:
References
Speaker at Bitcoin Expo in Toronto, April 2014