Story of Ethereum

Let’s take a quick dive into Ethereum’s history.

Ethereum is the second most popular cryptocurrency by marketcap, known for smart contracts and decentralised apps. Some argue Bitcoin is rather digital cash or simply a store of value, whereas the Ethereum network is a decentralised supercomputer and offers more programmable capabilities than Bitcoin.

In 2013, after Bitcoin’s decentralized network had already been running successfully for four years, a young computer scientist, Vitalik Buterin came up with the idea to try programming on Bitcoin.

He was looking for better conditions for the development of dapps, primarily a blockchain with more than Bitcoin’s 7 transactions per second. Vitalik also wanted an easy, and broadly used programming language. The code of a dapp runs on a decentralized network like Bitcoin or Ethereum, whereas “normal” apps run on centralized servers, which could potentially be manipulated or censored.

A few months later, at the end of 2013, Vitalik published and shared the Ethereum whitepaper. The whitepaper contains a detailed description of the rationale and technical design for the protocol and its architecture.

In December of the same year, Vitalik and a small group of selected developers, including Gavin Wood and Joseph Lubin, set to work. Nick Szabo’s take on smart contracts was taken to the next level adding Solidity, a programming language enabling Turing complete developments, the ground was laid for smart contracts on blockchain.

A smart contract on Ethereum is a computer protocol controlling the digital asset and if the protocol indicates a transfer is required, money is sent. Issuance of insurances, special rents or freelancer salaries are examples where this would be useful, removing third-party arbiters of claims.

Since the underlying network is decentralized, the apps are decentralized and called dapps. Dapp code is stored on the distributed ledger which is a huge benefit in terms of security and censorship resistance.

After a successful ICO, raising 16 million USD in August 2014, the development took off until the first block was mined on the 30th of July in 2015. The launch of the Ethereum network concurred with the birth of the world computer.
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