Author: Michael Johnson
Although the core concept was proven last summer when lead developers Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke initiated the PoC (proof-of-concept) series in Python, C++, and Go, a lot of engineering effort has gone to solidifying these implementations. We’re all anxious to release a stable command line client and issues flagged in the external audit are being resolved when uncovered. As soon as this process is complete, a general release should be around the corner. In the meantime, the rest of the ecosystem is continuing to evolve to more refined versions. One of the challenges with a project of this…
I’m a great believer in judging the present through the knowledge of the past. In the past 25 or so years one of the biggest trends in business and technology was what might loosely be termed as the open source revolution. The notion of it being good business to share your source code might not yet be cemented into the eyes of many a traditionalist, however the idea of leveraging existing open source software is. We are swiftly getting to the point where nearly all important, non-niche software is, one way or another, open. In all Android phones, all Mac…
History I came up with the first seed of this idea while chatting to Janislav Malahov in Berlin in Spring 2014. Unfortunately, the original article I wrote was lost along with my laptop when it was stolen in Vienna. After chatting over the principles with Vitalik more recently, we made a number of alterations and formalisations, mainly to the validation and the sub-state cutting mechanisms. What follows is a fairly complete illustration of one particular possible plan for block chain scalability in a later version of Ethereum. Since this is by no means a final proposal, there is a GitHub…
Hello, fellow Ethereans. I am Mihai Alisie, one of the Ethereum founders, and for the past year I’ve served as the vice president of the Ethereum Foundation and as director of Ethereum Switzerland. During the last few months I’ve been researching and testing a number of collaborative tools, constantly assessing the usefulness and applicability of each tool in the context of our community. Why? Because I think there is a lot of untapped potential in this community, and I think part of the reason that potential is untapped is the lack of a streamlined collaboration system. This article is a…
Few would argue against the fact that Ethereum has been gifted with one of the most diverse and thoughtful communities ever gathered around any open source project. Fueled by what can only be described as impassioned determination, developers from all walks of life have risked their time and credibility to pioneer in this radical and largely unknown domain of innovation. Indeed, even before genesis, Ethereum already boasts hundreds of projects covering everything from self-stabilizing currency to potential replacements for government services. Today we are launching a new program to support and thank those who continue to take this journey with us.…
Stiftung Ethereum, the Zug, Switzerland-based Ethereum Foundation –ethereum.org, is seeking to immediately fill the Executive Director position within the Foundation. The role involves defining and discharging the day-to-day business of the Foundation and leading the organization at the executive level. The successful candidate will have significant experience in corporate finance activities and/or operations. A technical (software, hardware, math, sciences) background is advantageous but not necessary. The ability to effectively operate in Switzerland and globally is essential and the successful candidate will need to either live full time in Switzerland or spend a majority of her/his time there. Experience in building…
With Ethereum getting close to its first official launch with Frontier, we have spent the last week of February at our holon in Switzerland discussing what the future of the Ethereum Foundation is going to look like. Since the start of the project, one of our primary dreams has been to not just deliver a world-class product, but also build a world-class organization, with quality of governance and transparency suitable for a foundation that would be tasked with helping to organize the maintenance of the Ethereum code for potentially decades to come. To that end, we have taken a number…
One of the questions that has perhaps been central to my own research in blockchain technology is: ultimately, what is it even useful for? Why do we need blockchains for anything, what kinds of services should be run on blockchain-like architectures, and why specifically should services be run on blockchains instead of just living on plain old servers? Exactly how much value do blockchains provide: are they absolutely essential, or are they just nice to have? And, perhaps most importantly of all, what is the “killer app” going to be? Over the last few months, I have spent a lot…
Special thanks to: Robert Sams, Gavin Wood, Mark Karpeles and countless cryptocurrency critics on online forums for helping to develop the thoughts behind this article If you were to ask the average cryptocurrency or blockchain enthusiast what the key single fundamental advantage of the technology is, there is a high chance that they will give you one particular predictable answer: it does not require trust. Unlike traditional (financial or other) systems, where you need to trust a particular entity to maintain the database of who holds what quantity of funds, who owns a particular internet-of-things-enabled device, or what the status…
As part of our tiered release process, we will soon be beginning the final phase prior to our Frontier release. So far our ongoing Proof-of-Concept IX testnet has been running smoothly for around a month with dozens of nodes around the world, well over 200,000 blocks and including clients on… Source link