November 27, 2013
Ethereum whitepaper published
Vitalik Buterin published the Ethereum whitepaper on November 27, 2013 — proposing a blockchainA distributed ledger where records are chained cryptographically — designed for tamper-resistant shared state. with a built-in TuringAlan Turing — mathematician who defined computability, broke Enigma, and posed the imitation game.-complete programming language for smart contractPrograms on a blockchain that run automatically when conditions are met — used in DeFi and NFTs.s.
What it was for
Ethereum extended BitcoinThe first decentralized cryptocurrency — a proof-of-work blockchain without a central issuer.'s ledger with accounts, gas, and bytecodeIntermediate instructions produced by compilers — often executed by a virtual machine rather than the CPU directly. execution — letting developers deploy unstoppable programs instead of just moving coins. ICOs, DeFiDecentralized finance — lending, trading, and derivatives on blockchains without traditional banks., NFTs, and DAOs all trace to this design: one shared state machine anyone can call.
People
- Vitalik Buterin — author
Why it's here
Ethereum introduced programmable blockchains to mainstream developer discourse.
Why it mattered
smart contractPrograms on a blockchain that run automatically when conditions are met — used in DeFi and NFTs.s turned blockchains from ledgers into general-purpose distributed runtimes.
What it solved
BitcoinThe first decentralized cryptocurrency — a proof-of-work blockchain without a central issuer.'s script was intentionally limited; builders wanted arbitrary on-chain logic.
Media
- ImageEthereum
GitR0n1n, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- Bitcoin whitepaper publishedOctober 31, 2008
- Ethereum mainnet launchesJuly 30, 2015
- Gavin Wood coins the term Web3April 2014
- ERC-20 token standard finalizedNovember 19, 2015