Ethereum Foundation Devcon2, 11 Oct 2016

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From YouTube: Devcon2: Ethereum in 25 Minutes

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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/2/ethereum-in-25-minutes

Ethereum Foundation Chief Scientist, Vitalik Buterin, describes Ethereum.

Speaker(s): Vitalik Buterin
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Society and Systems
Keywords: explanation, summary, origin, timeline, bitcoin, namecoin, mastercoin, solidity, contract, state, code, storage, balances, nonces, history, receipts, stack, merkle

Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers.
Devcon 2 was held in Shanghai, China on Sep 19 - 21, 2016.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/

A

Ok, great, thank you.

B

So I heard people in the audience complaining in wechat that I am too quiet, so I'm gonna.

B

Try to keep it closer to my mouth, this time, around,, we will see if it works.

B

Great,, so this is one of the standard presentations I give when people want a quick overview of the entire ethereum protocol.

B

So chances are that you will listen through this:, you will catch some things,, you won't catch other things.

B

But at the very least you will understand what the broad structure is, and if there is any piece that you don't fully understand,.

B

We have quite a few materials online that tell you about the rest.. We have our github wiki,. The website.

B

If you are a developer, you can even read things like the yellow paper, and things like the amc, ethereum source code.

B

If you want to get like that, deep in understanding of how the ethereum protocol works,, I highly recommend doing those things.

B

If you have specific questions,, I also highly recommend even going into some of our public channels. so,. If you go to gitter.im/etherium for example...

B

You can actually,, like literally just talk to our developers,, who are like right there and you can ask questions where generally a fairly friendly community. I hope.

B

So anyway, etherium in 25 minutes.. So, first of all, how did the project start.

B

So, project started back in 2013. at the time. People were very interested in blockchains. back in 2011 there was a project called namecoin which was trying to make a blockchain based on ? system.

B

In 2013 there were projects called covered coins which were trying like digitize, arbitrary digital assets or arbitrary assets and put them on the blockchain.. There were protocols called mastercoin that were trying to integrate all sorts of fairly complex, features. so,. There is a consensus that you can do lots of different, really cool things with bitcoin or with other blockchains. so, project started back in 2013.. At the time, people were very interested in blockchains. people were looking at bitcoin.

B

people were excited about bitcoin., but people were also realizing that blockchains are useful for things other than just money..

B

Asset issue in crowd, funding, title registration,, lots and lots of stuff.. The problem is most watching. Protocols were designed like this bulky, calculator, single-purpose device works reasonably well, for, if all you care about is adding and multiplying numbers, but it does nothing else. and sure. Someone with a computer science degree and with a good calculator will think how to hack it to play video game inside of it.. But do you really want to do that?? So after this in 2013 there were people who were making protocols that look like this so, swiss army knife.?

B

Basically, you come up with a list of 10 or 20 features. You want to have, make a little tiny thing for each one of them,: stick them together into a knife, and there you go that's your product or in this case, you know,. That's your blockchain. so, back at the end of 2013, there were lots of projects that looked like this., they just said: "ok,.

B

You know we want blockchains to be usable for asset issue and crowdfunding, bets prediction: markets,, identity, registration,, title registration., pick a list of twenty different things,, have a list of twenty different transaction types and have a little piece of the protocol that supports each one. so,. This is all well and good.. The problem is what, if you come up with your list of twenty applications,, publish your protocol., then the next day, some guy says: "oh,. Look, I discovered the 21st blockchain application..

B

So this is the etherium way. [laughter, applause] you buy it once and download immediately comes with 50 or 100 applications.. If someone comes up with a new application,, they write the code, so, so,. Why do we love smartphones so much?? Basically, because the smartphone is nice and generic, how I'm gonna fit it in?" and in 2013? This is exactly what started to happen..

B

They upload it to the google app play store and if you want it to be accessible in china, you can upload it to huawei store as well and then, if anyone wants to use your application, they don't need to buy a new phone,. They don't need to buy a new hardware angle, you just download the app and get started immediately, running it., very simple.

B

and the cost of actually developing an application. All you have to do is write code.. You don't have to make your own hardware,. You don"t have to have your own manufacturing,. You don't have to have your own distribution.