In the first excerpt, we roughly understood some of the most basic concepts of Ethereum. Today we will continue to understand the history of Ethereum.
The content of this excerpt is taken from three chapters in the original document, with some links to external resources removed. Interested readers can visit my Github project to obtain the complete translation source code and compile it into an html document by themselves. Github address: https://github.com/riversyang/homestead-guide-cn.git
beginning
As a result of Vitalik Buterin's work and research in the Bitcoin community, he first proposed the idea of Ethereum at the end of 2013. Soon after, he published the Ethereum white paper (https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper). In the article, he describes the technical design and fundamentals of the Ethereum protocol and smart contract architecture. In January 2014, Vitalik officially announced Ethereum at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Florida, USA.
During that time, Vitalik had also begun working with Dr. Gavin Wood to create Ethereum. By April 2014, Gavin released the Ethereum Yellow Paper (https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper), which is the technical manual of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Based on the detailed description in the yellow paper, the Ethereum client already has technical implementations in 7 programming languages (C++, Go, Python, Java, JavaScript, Haskell, Rust), which also makes it an even better software.
The Ethereum Foundation and the Ethereum Presale
In addition to developing software for Ethereum, the ability to release new cryptocurrencies and blockchains requires tremendous ongoing work to assemble the resources needed to get them up and running. In order to launch a huge network of developers, miners, investors and other stakeholders, Ethereum announced plans for a pre-sale of its base currency unit - Ethereum. The legal and financial complexities associated with managing pre-sale funds also necessitate the establishment of relevant legal entities. In June 2014, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum) was established in Zug, Switzerland.
In early July 2014, Ethereum began a 42-day public presale of Ethereum for its initial distribution； 31,591 Bitcoins from the network, worth $18,439,086 at the time, were exchanged for 60,102,216 Ethereum. Funds from the sale were used to pay off legitimate liabilities, compensate developers for months of work, and serve as financial support for future Ethereum development.
ETH/DEV and Ethereum development
With the successful pre-sale of Ethereum, the development of Ethereum has also been carried out normally under the management of a non-profit organization ETH DEV. Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood and Jeffrey Wilcke also serve as the organization's three directors to uniformly manage specific development work. Developer interest in Ethereum continued to grow throughout 2014, and the ETH DEV team released a series of proof-of-concept (PoC) versions for the developer community to evaluate. These releases are frequently published on the Ethereum Blog (https://blog.ethereum.org) by the ETH DEV team, which also maintains the passion and motivation for Ethereum to move forward. The growing number of replies and user base on the Ethereum forums and Ethereum subreddit also confirms the platform’s appeal to the rapidly growing community of professional developers. This momentum continues to this day.
Developer Conference (DEVCON-0)
In November 2014, ETH DEV organized the Developer Conference (DEVCON-0) (https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/12/05/d%CE%BEvcon-0-recap/), bringing Ethereum developers from all over the world to Berlin, Germany, to discuss various extended applications of Ethereum technology. Many speeches and topics at DEVCON-0 have become important inspirations for making Ethereum more reliable, secure and scalable. Overall, the conference inspired developers to continue working on Ethereum’s official launch.
DEVgrants program
In April 2015, the DEVgrants project (https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/04/07/devgrants-help/) was announced. This is a program designed to provide funding for Ethereum and Ethereum-based projects. Hundreds of developers have contributed considerable time and creativity to the Ethereum project or related open source projects, and this program is designed to support and reward their contributions. The program continues to operate today, and its funding was replenished in January 2016.
Olympic test network, issue bounties and security audits
Between 2014 and 2015, Ethereum development went through a series of proof-of-concept releases until the ninth PoC open test network called Olympic. The developer community is invited to test the limits of the network (https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/05/09/olympic-frontier-pre-release/), and a large bounty fund is allocated to reward those who succeed in somehow getting different data records on the network or interrupting the operation of the system. One month after Olympic was released, the official announced the reward program (https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/08/26/olympic-rewards-announced/).
In early 2015, the Ethereum Bounty Program (http://bounty.ethereum.org/) was launched. The program offers Bitcoin rewards for finding weaknesses in any part of the Ethereum software. This is undoubtedly a great contribution to the reliability and security of Ethereum, and it also gives the Ethereum community great confidence in technology. This bounty program is currently active and has no plans to terminate.
The Ethereum security audit began at the end of 2014 and lasted until the first half of 2015. Ethereum has invited multiple third-party software security agencies to conduct an end-to-end audit of all key protocol components (Ethereum Virtual Machine, network, and proof-of-work). These audits discovered many security issues, which were resolved through repeated locating and testing, ultimately making Ethereum a more secure platform.
Ethereum Frontier released
The Ethereum Frontier network was released on July 30, 2015. Since then, developers have begun building smart contracts and decentralized applications on the Ethereum network. In addition to this, miners have also started joining the Ethereum network to support its security and earn ether from the blocks they mine. Although as the first milestone of the Ethereum project, the Frontier version is only a beta version for developers, but its capabilities and reliability have exceeded everyone's expectations, making developers flock to it and rush to start building their own solutions and improving the Ethereum ecosystem.
Developer Conference (DEVCON-1)
The second developer conference DEVCON-1 (https://devcon.ethereum.org/) was held in London in early November 2015. This five-day event produced more than 100 reports, roundtable discussions and inspiring exchanges, attracting more than 400 participants including developers, entrepreneurs, thinkers and business managers.
The presence of major companies like UBS, IBM and Microsoft also shows the interest of the business community in these technologies. Microsoft also announced that it will provide Ethereum blockchain as a Service (BaaS) on its cloud computing platform Azure (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/ethereum-blockchain-as-a-service-now-on-azure/). This, along with DEVCON-1, has become an important moment marking the emergence of Ethereum-centered blockchain technology into the mainstream.
Homestead version
Homestead is the second major version of the Ethereum platform and the first production-level release. It contains many protocol and network changes to support future network upgrades. The first version of Ethereum, the Frontier version, is essentially a beta version for developers to learn and experience and start initially building decentralized applications and tools.
Milestones in the Ethereum development roadmap
The initial development roadmap published before Ethereum was launched (https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/03/03/ethereum-launch-process/) pointed out the following milestones:
Pre-release Step 0: Olympic Test Network - May 2015
Release Step 1: Frontier - July 30, 2015
Release step 2: Homestead - March 14, 2016 (Pi Day)
Release Step 3: Metropolis - TBD
Release Step 4: Serenity - TBD
Although the above milestones are still valid, their essence has changed to some extent. The Olympic test network discovered many major improvements, and the Frontier version was released soon thereafter. Homestead is a sign of exiting the beta product stage and entering a stable version. Homestead has been automatically introduced with block 1,150,000, which was generated around March 14, 2016 (Pi Day).
The Ethereum Foundation
The Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Switzerland. Its goal is to manage funds generated from Ethereum sales to better support Ethereum and the decentralized technology ecosystem.
The Ethereum Foundation was established in Switzerland in July 2014. Its purpose is to promote the development of new technologies and application forms, especially in the field of new open decentralized software architecture.
Its goal is to enable decentralized open technologies to be developed, cultivated, upgraded and maintained. One of the primary, but not the only, central tasks is to promote the development of the Ethereum protocol and related technologies, as well as to promote and support applications that use Ethereum technology and protocols. In addition to this, the Ethereum Foundation also supports and advocates for a decentralized Internet in various forms.
For more information about the foundation, please refer to the official website of the fund management team (https://ethereum.org/foundation).
to be continued.
Translation: Fengjinglu Wenping
This article was first published in Jianshu. EthFans reprints with permission from the author.
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http://ethfans.org/shaoping/articles/devcon1-first-day
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