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Whitepaper - Ethereum Classic With Cover

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<strong>Ethereum</strong> <strong>Classic</strong> Documentation, Release 0.1<br />

looking at the projects that use <strong>Ethereum</strong>. Already, there are a number of high-profile projects built on <strong>Ethereum</strong><br />

such as Augur, Digix, Maker, and many more (see Dapps). In addition, there are development teams that build<br />

open source components that anyone can use. While each of these organizations are separate from the <strong>Ethereum</strong><br />

Foundation and have their own goals, they undoubtedly benefit the overall <strong>Ethereum</strong> ecosystem.<br />

Further Watching/Reading:<br />

• Vitalik Buterin - TNABC 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjhe0MVRHO4<br />

• Gavin Wood - DEVCON 1 - <strong>Ethereum</strong> for Dummies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_LK0t_qaPo<br />

• <strong>Ethereum</strong> London Meetup (best detailed here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJGIeSCgskc<br />

Smart contracts<br />

by Alex:<br />

Would you enter in a contract with someone you’ve never met? Would you agree to lend money to some farmer in<br />

Ethiopia? Would you become an investor in a minority-run newspaper in a war zone? Would you go to the hassle<br />

of writing up a legal binding contract for a $5 dollar purchase over the internet?<br />

The answer is no for most of these questions, the reason being that a contract requires a large infrastructure:<br />

sometimes you need a working trust relationship between the two parties, sometimes you rely on a working legal<br />

system, police force and lawyer costs.<br />

In <strong>Ethereum</strong> you don’t need any of that: if all the requisites to the contract can be put in the blockchain then they<br />

will, in a trustless environment for almost no cost.<br />

Instead of thinking of moving your current contracts to the blockchain, think of all the thousand little contracts<br />

that you would never agree to simply because they weren’t economically feasible or there was not enough legal<br />

protection..<br />

DAO<br />

Here is just one example: imagine you own a small business with your friends. Lawyers and accountants are<br />

expensive, and trusting a single partner to oversee the books can be a source of tension (even an opportunity for<br />

fraud). Complying strictly with a system in which more than one partner oversees the books can be trying and is<br />

subject to fraud whenever the protocol isn’t followed exactly.<br />

Using a smart contract, ownership in your company and terms for the disbursal of funds can be specified at the<br />

outset. The smart contract can be written such that it is only changeable given the approval of a majority of owners.<br />

Smart contracts like these will likely be available as open source software, so you won’t even need to hire your<br />

own programmer instead of an accountant/lawyer.<br />

A smart contract like this scales instantly. A couple of teenagers can split revenue from a lemonade stand just as<br />

transparently as a sovereign wealth fund can disburse funds to the hundred million citizens who are entitled to it.<br />

In both cases the price of this transparency is likely to be fractions of a penny per dollar.<br />

1.1.5 History of <strong>Ethereum</strong><br />

For a recent historical account, see Taylor Gerring’s blogpost<br />

Inception<br />

<strong>Ethereum</strong> was initially described by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013 as a result of his research and work in the Bitcoin<br />

community. Shortly thereafter, Vitalik published the <strong>Ethereum</strong> white paper, where he describes in detail the technical<br />

design and rationale for the <strong>Ethereum</strong> protocol and smart contracts architecture. In January 2014, <strong>Ethereum</strong><br />

was formally announced by Vitalik at the The North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Florida, USA.<br />

Around that time, Vitalik also started working with Dr. Gavin Wood and together co-founded <strong>Ethereum</strong>. By<br />

April 2014, Gavin published the <strong>Ethereum</strong> Yellow Paper that would serve as the technical specification for the<br />

8 Chapter 1. Contents

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