以太坊历史

最近的历史记录，请查阅 Taylor Gerring’s blogpost

开端

以太坊最初由在比特币社区工作和研究的Vitalik Buterin在2013年末被提出，不久之后，Vitalik发布了 以太坊白皮书，里面描述了技术设计细节、以太坊协议的原理和智能合约的架构。在2014年1月，以太坊北Vitalik在美国弗罗里达州迈阿密的北美比特币会议上正式宣布。

在那一段时间，Vitalik开始和Gavin Wood博士合作共同创立了以太坊。在2014年4月，Gavin发布了 以太坊黄皮书 ，它为以太坊虚拟机（EVM）提供了技术规范。在黄皮书的详细技术规范指导下，以太坊客户端被用多种语言进行实现（C++，Go，Python，Java，JavaScript，Haskell，Rust），并被整合成更好的软件。

以太坊基金会和以太币的预售

近一步开发以太坊软件，建立和启动一个新的加密货币和区块链需要整合大量的资源。为了给开发者、矿工、投资者和其他利益相关者启动这个大型网络，以太坊宣布计划推出以太币，以太坊现金单位，并通过预售这些以太币来筹集初始资金。由于预售在法律和金融层面的复杂性，导致一些法律实体需要呗创建，其中包括 Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum) 2014年6月创建于瑞士的Zug。

2014年7月初，以太坊开启了42天的公开筹集工作，总计筹集31591比特币，当时的价值$18439086，等值于60102216以太币。初始资金用于偿还日益增长的债务、开发商几个月的报酬以及以太坊基金会的运营资金。

ETH/DEV和以太坊开发

Following the successful ether presale, Ethereum development was formalized under a non-for-profit organization called ETH DEV, which manages the development of Ethereum under contract from Ethereum Suisse – with Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke as the 3 directors of the organization. Developer interest in Ethereum grew steadily throughout 2014 and the ETH DEV team delivered a series of proof-of-concept (PoC) releases for the development community to evaluate. Frequent posts by ETH DEV team on the the Ethereum blog also kept the excitement and momentum around Ethereum going. Increasing traffic and growing user-base on both the Ethereum forum and the ethereum subreddit testified that the platform is attracting a fast-growing and devoted developer community. This trend has been continuing to this very day.

DEVCON-0开端

In November 2014, ETH DEV organized the DEVCON-0 event, which brought together Ethereum developers from around the world to Berlin to meet and discuss a diverse range of Ethereum technology topics. Several of the presentations and sessions at DEVcon-0 would later drive important initiatives to make Ethereum more reliable, more secure, and more scalable. Overall, the event galvanized developers as they continued to work towards the launch of Ethereum.

DEVgrants program

In April 2015, the DEVgrants program was announced, which is a program that offers funding for contributions both to the Ethereum platform, and to projects based on Ethereum. Hundreds of developers were already contributing their time and thinking to Ethereum projects and in open source projects. This program served to reward and support those developers for their contributions. The DEVgrants program continues to operate today and funding of the program was recently renewed in January 2016.

Olympic测试网络，错误赏金和安全审计

Throughout 2014 and 2015 development went through a series of proof of concept releases leading to the 9th POC open testnet, called Olympic. The developer community was invited to test the limits of the network and a substantial prize fund was allocated to award those holding various records or having success in breaking the system in some way or other. The rewards were announced officially a month after the live release.

In early 2015, an Ethereum Bounty Program was launched, offering BTC rewards for finding vulnerabilities in any part of the Ethereum software stack. This has undoubtedly contributed to the reliability and security of Ethereum and the confidence of the Ethereum community in the technology. The bounty program is currently still active and there is no end date planned.

The Ethereum security audit began at the end of 2014 and continued through the first half of 2015. Ethereum engaged multiple third party software security firms to conduct an end-to-end audit of all protocol-critical components (Ethereum VM, networking, Proof of Work). The audits uncovered security issues that were addressed and tested again and as a result ultimately led to a more secure platform.

以太坊前沿版本启动

The Ethereum Frontier network launched on July 30th, 2015, and developers began writing smart contracts and decentralized apps to deploy on the live Ethereum network. In addition, miners began to join the Ethereum network to help secure the Ethereum blockchain and earn ether from mining blocks. Even though the Frontier release is the first milestone in the Ethereum project and was intended for use by developers as a beta version, it turned out to be more capable and reliable than anyone expected, and developers have rushed in to build solutions and improve the Ethereum ecosystem.

See also:

DEVCON-1

The second developers’ conference DEVCON-1 took place in the city of London at the beginning of November 2015. The 5-day event featured more than 100 presentations, panel discussions and lightning talks, attracted more than 400 participants, a mix of developers, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and business executives. The talks were all recorded and are freely available

The presence of large companies like UBS, IBM and Microsoft clearly indicated enterprise interest in the technology. Microsoft announced that it would offer Ethereum on its new Blockchain as a Service offering on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. In conjunction with DEVCON-1, this announcement will be remembered as the moment when blockchain technology became mainstream, with Ethereum at the center of it.