Ethereum at Five: Unicorns, Rainbows and a World Computer
Taking stock of the No. 2 blockchain's journey from a wild idea to a $30B market cap
Welcome! This week marks the fifth anniversary of Ethereum’s debut, and we’ll be commemorating the milestone with a slate of special content.
Each morning you’ll receive this newsletter in your inbox, stuffed with articles that trace how far the world’s second-largest blockchain has come – and how long it still has to go.
You’ll get explainers that break down intimidating concepts like DAOs and dapps; refreshers on the network’s wild ride from an audacious white-paper idea to a live platform powering dizzying innovations and dubious investments alike; and fresh insights on what’s next as Vitalik’s creation makes the nail-biting transition from Bitcoin-style mining to proof-of-stake consensus.
In addition, we’ll be live-streaming conversations all week with some of the Ethereum community’s luminaries, from O.G. co-founder Anthony Di Iorio to UX trailblazer Taylor Monahan to MakerDAO mogul Rune Christensen. The CoinDesk Live sessions will be broadcast on Twitter, YouTube and our website. If you want to network with fellow attendees and receive calendar updates so you don’t miss a session, register here.
You can also chat with us and fellow audience members and suggest questions for the speakers on our Discord server. And you can hear untold stories from Ethereum's history from the people who were there, the old-school way: dial +1 (661) 4-UNICRN (+1-661-486-4276).
Meantime, dig in below to read about the daunting challenges, distinctive culture and fascinating story of Ethereum.
Marc Hochstein, Executive Editor, CoinDesk
Today on CoinDesk Live
Peace, Love and Unicorns: The Culture of Ethereum – Monday, July 27, 4 p.m. ET
Speakers: Andrew Keys, Tonya M. Evans, Amanda Cassatt, Leigh Cuen
Ethereum prides itself on its inclusive, unicorns-and-rainbows vibe, which is a far cry from the cypherpunk, mountain-man culture of Bitcoin. Come for a discussion on how this diverse, freewheeling and extremely social approach to software development made Ethereum what it is today. Stay for fun memories from a panel of veteran Ethereans from their nonstop global tour of conferences, meetups and festivals.
Join our Discord community to chat during CoinDesk Live.
Cover Story: Ethereum as Lifestyle Brand
By Leigh Cuen
The lights were dimmed during the last day of Devcon in October 2019. A hush fell over the auditorium in Osaka, Japan. A haunting melody rippled through the crowd of roughly 1,000 people. Everyone knew the dance was about to begin.
Ethereum leaders, including inventor Vitalik Buterin, plus Hudson Jameson and Aya Miyaguchi of the Ethereum Foundation, would lead a goofy dance to close out the annual tech conference.
Cheers erupted when the Ethereum influencers took the stage. Soon the whole crowd was following along, jumping up and down, turning in circles. Critics might say they were simply mimicking the technologists on stage, but on the ground, people were adding their own moves or simply nodding along.
The tongue-in-cheek ritual offers a microcosm of the carefree Ethereum lifestyle brand, inspired by the cryptocurrency founded in 2015. Over the past five years, Ethereum, the blockchain platform that birthed so many ill-fated ideas, also launched a crop of products and services that are currently multibillion-dollar endeavors.
The dance is a promise “until next year,” the leaders tell the crowd. It’s a celebration of what the community has achieved so far and what it will achieve. The dance is a way to communicate with Ethereans from all around the world, even if they don’t speak English.
Blast From the Past
By Christie Harkin
Back in 2013, Vitalik Buterin, then just 19 years old, put together this early roadmap for Ethereum 1.0. It started with a “Magic Spark of Insight,” as he described it, that sounded like a giddy teenager from Mars: “Hey guys, let’s create a generalized smart contract and decentralized application platform with a stateful Turing-complete VM!”
(Source: Ethereum Builders Gitbooks)
2020: The Year Ethereum Stayed Home
By Brady Dale
This is a weird year for everyone and everything, but it’s a particularly weird year for Ethereum.
Why? The second-largest blockchain by market cap and the largest by contributing developers has always been known for having lots of events. COVID-19 has put the kibosh on that.
“These folks are in a state of constant BUIDLing,” said Amanda Cassatt, a ConsenSys alum who launched its Ethereal event series. “Ethereum is also, by design, a uniquely collaborative community. These factors contribute to the prevalence of and enthusiasm for in-person events.”
In normal times, there’s roughly one fairly big Ethereum conference somewhere in the world every month, but that has all come to a halt in 2020.
Today I Learned
Smart Contracts: Powering the ‘World Computer’
By Hoa Nguyen
Ethereum aims to become the “world computer” that facilitates the decentralization of many of our daily activities that would traditionally be serviced through a central entity.
Similar to the Bitcoin network, Ethereum leverages blockchain technology to eliminate the need for third parties that store and manage user data. But unlike its better-known predecessor, Ethereum was designed to allow for a wider variety of applications on its network, not limited to just financial transactions. That includes everything from video games where you can breed virtual cats, online platforms for artists to sell digital art and even a decentralized Twitter.
Ethereum uses programs called smart contracts to carry out its functions. Pursuant to a cryptographic code, smart contracts execute the terms of an agreement exactly as they are set up by their developers.
Ethereum History in 5 Charts
Part 1: A Bloodless Secession
By Christine Kim and Shuai Hao
Not one year after the launch of Ethereum, a seminal event split the community in two.
So acute was the disagreement between these two subcommunities that the row resulted in the creation of a new cryptocurrency called “Ethereum Classic,” cloned from the original Ethereum codebase.
Ethereum Classic (ETC) was created July 20, 2016, after $60 million worth of ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, was stolen from users of a dapp known as The DAO. At the time, The DAO was the only dapp of its kind where users could pool funds and vote on which projects the money would be invested in. The DAO’s vision (before it was hacked and drained of a significant chunk of its finances) was to be an investor-guided venture capital fund.
After weeks of deliberation, Ethereum developers reached a consensus that they should turn back the clock – reverse The DAO hack transactions and restore users’ lost ETH. The changes could only be implemented through a network-wide upgrade, also called a hard fork. Those who opposed the change argued in favor of retaining the integrity of the original blockchain’s history of transactions and balances – hacked funds and all.
So, on July 20, 2016, when the upgrade to restore user funds was executed, the Ethereum blockchain split in two. The portion of the community that retained the original log of transactions and balances from The DAO hack and did not upgrade the software created a parallel network, Ethereum Classic.
Since the split, the Ethereum network has hard forked seven additional times, though none of these subsequent upgrades have reached the same level of controversy as “The DAO Fork” of 2016.
Next in Ethereum History: Those darned cats….
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This newsletter was brought to you by CoinDesk editors Christie Harkin, Marc Hochstein, Elaine Ramirez and Zack Seward.
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