Ethereum is a new cryptographic protocol and currency.

1. Brian Fabian Crain - Epicenter Bitcoin
Wednesday, January 29, 14

2. Overview
• New
Cryptographic Currency / Protocol
• Competitor
to Colored Coins, Mastercoin &
BitShares
• Smart
Contracts & Decentralized Autonomous
Corporations
• Fundraising
Wednesday, January 29, 14
Period: Starts Saturday February 1

3. DACs
• Corporation
= group of people operating under
set of rules
• Autonomous
• Mission,
• Get
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Corporations
Goals, Operations => Code
rid of people/central point of failure => DAC

4. DACs
• Could
implement an Autonomous Corporation
now, but who controls server?
• Decentralized
• Capacity
• Capacity
-> gets rid of point of failure
to think
to hold capital & do economic
transactions
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5. DACs
• Shareholders
• Pay
Dividends
• Engage
• Hire
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in economic activities
people & pay salaries

6. DACs
• David
Johnston (Mastercoin):
”Decentralized Applications will one day surpass the world’s largest existing
software corporations in utility, user base, and network valuation due to their
superior incentivization structure, flexibility, transparency, resiliency, and
distributed nature.”
Wednesday, January 29, 14

7. Self-Stabilizing Currency
• Data
Feed: USD-XCOIN Exchange Rate (set to 1)
• If
XCOIN loses value -> monetary supply
decreases
• If
XCOIN gains value -> monetary supply
contracts
• =>
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cryptographic USD-linked currency

8. Other Attempts
• Colored
Coins:
- Specific bitcoins as tokens for some asset
• Mastercoin:
- Application layer on top of bitcoin
• ProtoShares
/ BitShares:
- separate blockchain/currency to realize DACs
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9. Ethereum
• Own
blockchain & currency
• Simplicity,
• Core
Universality
unit: Contracts
• Generalized
application
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computing platform vs specific

10. Contracts
• Autonomous
• Elements:
• Gets
• Can
Agent - Lives on blockchain
Address, Balance, Code
activated by sending money to address
run code, send transactions, change
memory, even modify its own code.
Wednesday, January 29, 14

11. Contract Example
if tx.value < block.basefee * 200:
stop // if the fee is too low abort
if contract.storage[tx.data[0]]:
stop // if address is already registered abort
contract.storage[tx.data[0]] = tx.data[1]
// otherwise store name & address
// tx.data[0] ~ name
// tx.data[1] ~ phone number
Wednesday, January 29, 14

12. Ether
•
Currency is used to pay transaction fee & computation fee
•
60-day period - start on February 1
•
1 bitcoin => 3,000 ether issued (1st week)
decreases to 1,500 by the end
•
2,000 Investor - 450 founders (vested) - 550 organization
•
Capped at 30,000 BTC
•
Controversial...
•
Higher Investment -> Worse
Wednesday, January 29, 14

13. Resources
• Blog
Post
• Resources
• Podcast
(Episode 3 & 4)
epicenterbitcoin.com
Wednesday, January 29, 14