Special thanks to Vlad Zamfir for much of the thinking behind multi-chain cryptoeconomic paradigms First off, a history lesson. In October 2013, when I was visiting Israel as part of my trip around the Bitcoin world, I came to know the core teams behind the colored coins and Mastercoin projects. Once I properly understood Mastercoin and its potential, I was immediately drawn in by the sheer power of the protocol; however, I disliked the fact that the protocol was designed...

Special thanks to Robert Sams for the development of Seignorage Shares and insights regarding how to correctly value volatile coins in multi-currency systems Note: we are not planning on adding price stabilization to ether; our philosophy has always been to keep ether simple to minimize black-swan risks. Results of this research will likely go into either subcurrencies or independent blockchains One of the main problems with Bitcoin for ordinary users is that, while the network may be a great way...

I thought it was about time I’d give an update on my side of things for those interested in knowing how we’re doing on the Dutch side. My name is Jeff, a founder of Ethereum and one of the three directors (alongside Vitalik and Gavin) of Ethereum ÐΞV, the development entity building Ethereum and all the associated tech. Over the past months I’ve been been looking for a suitable office space to host the Amsterdam Hub. Unfortunately it takes more work...

Well… what a busy two weeks. I thought it about time to make another update for any of you who might be interested in how we’re doing. If you don’t already know, I’m Gavin, a founder of Ethereum and one of the three directors (alongside Vitalik and Jeffrey) of Ethereum ÐΞV, the development entity building Ethereum and all the associated technology. After doing some recruitment on behalf of DEV in Bucharest with the help of Mihai Alisie and the lovely...

An important and controversial topic in the area of personal wallet security is the concept of “brainwallets” - storing funds using a private key generated from a password memorized entirely in one’s head. Theoretically, brainwallets have the potential to provide almost utopian guarantee of security for long-term savings: for as long as they are kept unused, they are not vulnerable to physical theft or hacks of any kind, and there is no way to even prove that you still remember...

Special thanks to Vlad Zamfir, Chris Barnett and Dominic Williams for ideas and inspiration In a recent blog post I outlined some partial solutions to scalability, all of which fit into the umbrella of Ethereum 1.0 as it stands. Specialized micropayment protocols such as channels and probabilistic payment systems could be used to make small payments, using the blockchain either only for eventual settlement, or only probabilistically. For some computation-heavy applications, computation can be done by one party by default,...

Who are you? I’m Gav - together with Jeffrey Wilcke and Vitalik Buterin, I’m one third of the ultimate leadership of Ethereum ÐΞV. ÐΞV is a UK software firm that is under a non-profit-making agreement with the Ethereum Foundation to create version 1.0 of the Web Three software stack. We three directors—who are ultimately responsible that the software is built and works—are the same three developers who designed and implemented the first working versions of the Ethereum clients. ÐΞV is...

Special thanks to Vlad Zamfir and Zack Hess for ongoing research and discussions on proof-of-stake algorithms and their own input into Slasher-like proposals One of the hardest problems in cryptocurrency development is that of devising effective consensus algorithms. Certainly, relatively passable default options exist. At the very least it is possible to rely on a Bitcoin-like proof of work algorithm based on either a randomly-generated circuit approach targeted for specialized-hardware resitance, or failing that simple SHA3, and our existing GHOST...