Everything you need to know about Ethereum

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a revolutionary blockchain-based distributed smart contract platform. It provides a decentralised virtual machine that can execute p2p (peer-to-peer) smart contracts using ether.

• General White Paper, Technical Yellow Paper (pdf)
• Ethereum the world computer (video)
• Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum introduction at Devcon 1 (video)
• Joseph Lubin’s interview on building decentralized applications (video)
• BBC explains Ethereum (video)
• Techcrunch on Ethereum (video)
• ELI5 attempts, this one is pretty good 🙂

 

Where do I start?

You want to start by getting yourself set up with a wallet. You have a number of choices:

• Download the Mist Wallet
• Download the Parity Wallet
• Download the Harmony Wallet
• Install the MetaMask Chrome extension
• Use the client-side MyEtherWallet generator
• Secure your keys with Ledger Nano S or Trezor hardware wallets

Under the Ethereum Hood

Get Ether, write smart contracts, build DApps, and dive into Ethereum:

• Read a beginner’s guide to Ethereum (by Coinbase)
• Get the current week’s news in Ethereum or the DApp Daily
• Find out how to buy Ether or compute your GPU’s mining profitability
• Build your own crypto-currency with Ethereum
• Raise funds from friends without a third party
• Build a democracy on the blockchain
• Build your first DApp in ten steps
• Monitor the network status (mirror) and the gas price market
• Read the documentation (for Homestead)
• Check out some DApps, that run on Ethereum
• Learn Solidity, an Ethereum smart contract language
• Browse the Ethereum Ecosystem Business Directory
• Ask questions at Ethereum Stack Exchange
• Live chat with Ethereum developer teams on Gitter
• Join the Ethereum community chat on Discord
• Check out Ethereum Meetups in your area

More in-depth Knowledge:

The annual Ethereum Developer Conference (Devcon):

• Devcon 0 (Berlin, 2014) talks and videos
• Devcon 1 (London, 2015) talks and videos
• Devcon 2 (Shanghai, 2016) talks and videos
• Devcon 3 (Cancún, 2017) website and registration

Other conferences, workshops, meetups, or tutorials:

• European Ethereum Development Conference (EDCON)
• London Ethereum (meetup)
• Berlin Ethereum (meetup)
• Ethereum Core Developer Meetings (call)
• Building Ethereum DApps using Solidity (tutorial)

List of protocol updates and hard-forks:

• Olympic pre-release (Testnet, Chain #0 – May 9, 2015)
  • Blog post
• Frontier public release (Ethereum Genesis, Chain #1 – July 30, 2015)
  • Blog post
• Homestead (Block #1,150,000 – March 14, 2016)
  • Blog post, EIP-2, EIP-7, EIP-8
• DAO Fork (Block #1,920,000 – July 20, 2016)
  • Blog post, opposition at r/EthereumClassic
• DoS Fork (Block #2,463,000 – October 18, 2016)
  • Blog post, EIP-150, EIP-158
• Spurious Dragon (Block #2,675,000 – November 22, 2016)
  • Blog post, EIP-155, EIP-160, EIP-161, EIP-170
• Metropolis will be scheduled end of June, 2017 (to be announced)
  • work in progress: EIP-86, EIP-96, EIP-98, EIP-100, EIP-140, EIP-196, EIP-197, EIP-198
• Serenity to be announced (2018)
  • Why does Ethereum plan to move to Proof of Stake?

List of public testnets:

• Olympic, pre-release public test network with ID #0 (replaced by Morden)
• Morden, Fontier-based public test network with ID #2 (replaced by Ropsten)
• Ropsten, Homestead-based public test network with ID #3 (recently revived)
• ConsenSys, Proof-of-Work public test network
• Kovan, Proof-of-Authority public test network (Parity only)
• Rinkeby, Proof-of-Authority public test network (Geth only)

source: 5chdn