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Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Russian canadian Vitalik Buterin, a programmer and writer involved with Bitcoin, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications. As opposed to other bitcoin inspired projects, Ethereum created its own blockchain to provide greater development flexibility by inclusion of a Turing complete programming language. Ethereum's live blockchain was launched on 30 July 2015.
By that time, Gavin Wood was introduced to Vitalik and coded the first functional implementation of Ethereum, invented the Solidity contract language and wrote the Yellow Paper, the first formal specification of any blockchain protocol and one of the key ways Ethereum distinguishes itself from other blockchain-based systems. Most recently he published ‘Ðaps: What Web 3.0 Looks Like’. He introduced to the Internet as a “zero-trust interaction system” made possible by a decentralised and encrypted information publication system, a pseudonymous low-level messaging system and a consensus engine
Milestones of the Ethereum development roadmap
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