The Early Days of Ethereum

Transcript

Yeah. Good morning everybody. Hello. Thanks for coming. Um my name's Bob Summerwill. Um I have been involved with Ethereum since very early. I first met Vitalik in 2014. Really got involved myself in 2015. Uh Early Days of Ethereum is a history project which I really started in 2017. It's been fallow for a number of years, but then revived this last year or so. Um so Early Days of Ethereum, it's essentially gathering uh social historical information about uh uh about Ethereum and about the individuals.

Um So, I've got profiles on about 200 people who were involved in the early days. Uh on individual profiles, they're all sort of like Wiki style with a bunch of cross-links. I've got articles. I've got videos. Um and um uh an interview series as well. Um What I'm going to do today is really >> say What's your I'm going to whip through various historical things from 2014. I'm going to have a a huge amount of content, so just going to show you a few things mainly from 2014 or really the first or year of the project. So, this is a place

called uh Calafou uh near Barcelona which is kind of a bit of a squat collaborative where Vitalik uh went on his sort of 6-month journey prior to starting Ethereum. What's your name and like talk about some of the things you've done. Sure. My name is Vitalik Buterin. I've uh write for write for the Bitcoin Magazine and I've been doing that for 2 years. I've also been more recently uh getting into Bitcoin development. I work work with Mihai on uh both the magazine and on this new project this new project called Egora, which is sort of like a marketplace for Bitcoin kind of kind of

like eBay, but plus a whole load of social networking plus cryptocurrencies and other cool stuff. And just now working at working on multi multi multi-signature transact So, it is a very sort of crypto-anarchisty kind of uh a place. And I I only recently saw this little video, which is kind of fun. >> [music] [music] [music]

[music] [music] >> So, the Unsystem Collective really Amir Taaki was kind of the main guy there. So, Amir was the fifth ever uh Bitcoin developer. He actually went off to Syria to fight ISIS as well, so he's a real kind of revolutionary. Anyway, so that was that was uh some of the culture that you had leading into the beginning of Ethereum, though a lot of that didn't really come across.

Anyway, we're now going to head to Toronto uh for Bitcoin Decentral uh which is run by Anthony Di Iorio, another of the co-founders, and Vitalik was a a very regular visitor there. >> [music] >> On January 1st, 2014, Bitcoin Decentral launched. >> [music] >> Bitcoin Decentral is Canada's first co-working [music] space for Bitcoin and other disruptive technology innovations. What you're seeing now is the launch turnout from our January 1st event, hundreds of people home with Crypto Kit, Coin Talk, and the Toronto Bitcoin meetup, and working space for the

Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, Ethereum, and many more projects to follow. With over 5,500 sq ft and four floors of space, Bitcoin Decentral's [music] goal is to provide the locations, services, and tools for I don't know if you spotted that Joe Lubin was just in frame there on the left-hand side. Where are we? Uh da da da da da da. Can't see it there. Anyway, so this was the first night that Joe Lubin got involved with Ethereum was the 1st of January. He uh he went along to this opening and you know, connected and carried on. That was also the first night for William Mougayar.

Bitcoin Decentral's [music] goal is to provide the locations, services, and tools Joe was on the left there. for disruptive technology innovation and Uh it's also going to going to be office space for a new coin that's coming out called Ethereum, which is the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, which is right over there in the corner there. Vitalik is one of the head writers for Bitcoin Magazine, the smartest person I believe in Bitcoin that knows Bitcoin inside and out. >> [laughter] >> The best writer in Bitcoin. Uh and then I I I think just a genius. So, he's coming up with a new coin that we think will be Bitcoin 2 or crypto So, that was Anthony Di Iorio. Uh so, Anthony uh it was Anthony who reached out to Charles Hoskinson uh to get, you

know, some sort of technical evaluation on that. Um Anthony also brought in Amir Chetrit, another of the founders. Joe you know, would have appeared there. Uh you still at this point did not have uh any of the other developers. They came a little bit later. currency tracked. So, Ethereum, instead of having lots of features, So, this is a couple of weeks later in Miami where Ethereum was first announced. 26th of January. tries to be simple. It says, "Ethereum, we do not have features. We have just the programming language."

So, everything that you want to implement through Ethereum, you would have to implement it as a contract. Uh so, straight after that talk uh everyone was sort of went outside and these you getting mobbed there with with these questions, right? A lot of excitement uh at this announcement. So, just to the right there of uh Vitalik, you can see Joe, Joe Lubin, uh and then Anthony Di Iorio is the little tiny head down there. Um Dan Larimer uh the infamous Dan Larimer uh was had some ambush questions there. So, that's uh Dan of BitShares uh EOS fame.

The other thing that happened there in Miami is there was a house which Anthony Di Iorio uh rented out. Uh basically, Anthony was bankrolling everything until the the crowd sale. So, this place was where many of the people met for the first time. So, you know, across the front there, you've got Gavin Wood now of Polkadot. You've got Vitalik. You've got Anthony. Um Taylor Gerring uh was one of the co-founders of the Ethereum Foundation and took many of these photos. Uh you got Joe Lubin right at the back there and Charles Hoskinson, many other early people here.

Uh so, that was a real sort of hangout and first physical get-together of people who'd been working from all over the place. Uh Gavin Wood for you, thanks. Hello. So, this was immediately after uh Miami uh Gav did his first public talk uh in London. So, Gavin Wood was the CTO. Uh he built the C++ client. He wrote the yellow paper. Um and he uh sort of started the Solidity project as well.

>> [applause] >> Thank you. Uh yeah, wow. I thought it was going to be about five or 10 people around the table at a pub like the Ethereum meetup, but yeah, I was a bit wrong, wasn't I? All right. Um yeah, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about Ethereum. I'm going to go off on my own a little bit. I'm not going to go for Vitalik's talk where he he went about how it's going to revolutionize altcoin creation. I'm going to move more for the kind of what it what it'll mean maybe for society. I've had a bit of a think about this over the past So, yeah, as it says at the back there, Ethereum's Ethereum's purpose is to give life to the experiments that will change society in the 21st century. So, that's quite quite a bold kind of uh aim. Um

so, that was from Charles. So, Charles Hoskinson was actually the CEO uh for the first seven months of the project. week or two. If you sort of revel Hi, I'm Charles Hoskinson. I'm a core developer of the Ethereum project and I'm a theoretical mathematician and [music] computer scientist. Would anyone like to guess how old Charles was at that point? 25. Really. He's always looked like he's about 50. Ethereum is a project that's attempting to do that. We're taking a very beautiful, very simple, Turing-complete programming language. We're combining it with a blockchain. And we're putting it together in this incredibly elegant

foundation that allows everybody to implement things like small or smart property, smart contracts, [music] their own version of Dropbox on top of that platform. And the goal is to be agnostic. It's to be neutral. [music] It's to allow everybody to come in to innovate. This is Charles arriving in Zug. So, shortly after the Miami conference, many of them moved to Zug. There'd been sort of a determination that Switzerland was probably the best place to to launch such a project, not from uh Toronto as Anthony had hoped.

My name is Another key figure here is Stefan Tual. Uh so, Stefan was the sort of community communications guy. Um and later notoriously part of Slock.it and the the DAO. I'm Stefan Tual. I'm the CCO for Ethereum. My background is in IT, startups, and development. My role at Ethereum is to bring together entrepreneurs, developers, and investors to build decentralized applications on our platform. And Stefan was actually a very key guy.

I only recently found out on the website there was Ralph Merkle was was listed. And I always thought that was a joke. It was like, right, I own Satoshi's an advisor. But apparently Ralph Merkle actually really was an advisor through Stefan, incredibly. Not for a long time, but still. >> [music] >> Bitcoin Expo happened in Toronto uh in April of that year. Again, Anthony Di Iorio led. So, he was the the head of the Canadian uh Bitcoin Association.

Um Ethereum were the headline sponsor for this Bitcoin event, the Ethereum company as it was at this point. It was a for-profit company uh in Switzerland. And >> [music] >> And you have an expo and they were swagging it up. One and only time. >> [music] [music] [music] >> So, Gavin Wood there.

>> [music] >> Taylor Gerring in the middle. This is Richard Stout, one of the designers in the front. >> [music] [music] [music] >> There was also a hackathon, of which nearly all of the projects were Ethereum-based. >> [music] [music] >> My apologies for the volume.

>> [music] >> Amir Taaki there. >> [music] >> Ethan Buchman of Cosmos. Vlad Zamfir, that's Charles. Not very much later, so so we're we're through to June now. So, this is a a a pensive Vitalik wearing the same shirt. He's had that one for about three or four months, hasn't he, that same one.

Um so, this is Vitalik here with uh [music]

[music] that was doing the development. So, they were basically a a subsidiary funded by the EF. So, Stefan here again introducing Jeff and Gav. Gavin Wood and Jeffrey Wilcke uh here to talk to us about Dev. Dev is the uh one of the 20 T. Also, we have two languages, two clients that have full

connection towards each other. Um they can talk to each other and have an actual exchange between two coins that actually don't really know anything of each other. Um as well as a DNS replacement. So, instead of going to to google.com, you can now go to uh google.eth. And um because for example, if your your DNS server would now be uh if if it just shuts down or decides that the uh the the name that you registered is actually too valuable, it it could basically just take your stuff and and run with it if it wants.

So, Namecoin implementing Namecoin was one of the examples they had from the very start. Really a proto-ENS. So, this is the exchange. And I think Gavin, are you going to say anything about that? Yeah. So, this is um the first decentralized Well, actually it's probably not the first, but it's the first that I know of, uh decentralized exchange that runs on the Ethereum platform. This is nearly a year before mainnet. Um it's pretty standard exchange really. I mean, it's got a it's got an order book. Uh these are my orders that I've put in so far.

I've uh I put an order in. I want uh 20,000 JFE. That's that's the Jeff coin. Uh I wanted uh at whatever it is, one and two thirds Jeff for Gav. Um so, I've offered 12,000 Gav for 20,000 Jeff. I obviously uh I obviously don't value uh Jeff quite as much as Jeff does. >> [clears throat] >> If anyone is interested, Gavcoin is actually wrapped and live. You can you can DEX it up and get yourself some Gavcoin right now.

Um and just a little bit later that year we come into Devcon Zero. So, Devcon Zero was the first uh Ethereum conference. Uh it was a private event though, it wasn't a public one. Uh you can see, you know, there's Thursday in the photo. I think there are about 40 people there. Mainly Ethereum Foundation people, uh but you know, uh others from the outside. Uh and what I'm just going to close with is uh Gav invited everyone to introduce themselves. >> to get everybody to just give a very short 30-second introduction as to who they are in this project.

Yeah, so um I came onto the project back in >> Aaron Buchanan. He doesn't say his name. >> Hey, I'm Roman. Hey, uh I'm Lethe. Hi, I'm Marek. Hi I'm Hello, uh I'm Alex. Yeah, so I'm Kristof. Um Hey guys, I'm Vitalik. I'm helping out a little on the Python client. >> [laughter] >> Uh hi, I'm Daniel and I was Yeah, I'm Christian. Um yeah so >> [clears throat] >> I'm Felix.

I'm Victor. Hi, I'm Madian. Everyone, uh I'm Vlad. Hello uh I'm Pavel. I'm >> Hi, I'm Yuta. I'm Henning. Hi, I'm Conrad. Um Hey, uh Joseph Lubin, uh one of the founders. Hi, I'm Joris. I created So, I'm Jordi Hey guys, I'm Brian. I'm Yeah, hi. I'm Mark Eddie.

Hi, I'm Stefan. I'm the CCO for Ethereum at Dev. Uh I'm Vinny Gupta. I Hi, I'm Jason. Jeff. Hi, man. My name is Jeff. Um I do the Go implementation. I'm trying to All right. Okay. Hi, I'm Christian. Hi everyone, I'm Kent. Hi everyone, I'm George. Uh So, yeah, Ethereum was always the work of many hands. So, you know, I just wanted to bring some of those faces to you. Do you head to the website? It's early days of of eth.org.

And I now work on on Strato. We are tokenizing gold and silver and bringing DFI on top of that. The code base was started in 2014 as well. And I thank you. >> [applause] >> Yeah. Any questions? We've got a minute. No takers. I just wanted to know what motivated the switch from a profit base to foundation.

So, Ethereum was quite unique cuz there actually eight co-founders who largely had not even met each other beforehand. So, it became apparent quite quickly in those early months that they had quite misaligned visions of of of what they thought things would be. Really between crypto Google or crypto Mozilla. That was the the question is is it going to be a full profit company that makes something and then open sources it or are you going to do the thing in an open way from the start?

So, really like a lot of that tension pointed red wedding beyond personal things with Charles was really that that you know, that line in the sand which way is it going to go? There was also I think a misunderstanding of thinking it'd be really hard to do a foundation in Switzerland and it turned out not to be. So, basically straight after that meeting that that decision was made. I mean, Anthony Di Iorio very much wanted it to be a full profit cuz he'd actually like donated basically well, not donated. He'd lent pretty much all of his money into that early funding.

And you know, as he said, I didn't put all my money in for it just to be a non-profit. It was not a donation. Okay. Cheers, everyone. >> [applause]