Early Days of Ethereum

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

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Ryan Taylor

Ryan Taylor

Built the earliest websites

(Dec 2013 to Aug 2014?)

Before Ethereum, Ryan worked with Vitalik and Mihai on web development for Bitcoin Magazine, starting before the first issue was even released. Mihai had contacted Ryan based on seeing some of his prior work at DEFCON and other events.

In mid-December 2013, Ryan got involved in the Ethereum project too, building the first WordPress site that month with a series of later iterations through into mid-2014, with a transition to Github-based development at the end of that period. Following the "Red Wedding" drama in June he backed away. His final Ethereum work was perhaps around August 2014. Later that year he had a phone call with Mihai where he formally left the project.

Ryan was a ghost to Bob since 2018, having seen Ryan's name on the Ethereum website at various points during 2014, but with no social links and with a common name which was pretty untraceable. On 29th August 2025, this site crossed Ryan's twitter feed, with some contact of his having retweeted it. He had recently returned to blockchain community involvement in Berlin and had reconnected with some old friends and colleagues.

Ryan's current focus is the Zero-knowledge Audiovisual Club.

Here are direct links to the ethereum.org snapshots on those dates, so you can explore the site as it was on those particular days in early 2014. The preservation is not perfect, but some of the snapshots are still surprisingly useable. Ryan is searching his WordPress backups to see whether these sites can be resurrected in full.