Ethereum
Ethereum is an open-source, public, distributed blockchain computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality, which facilitates online contractual agreements.
All edits by Sumon Sadhu
Vitalik Buterin proposed the ethereum protocol in his 2013 whitepaper with the goal of creating a general purpose blockchain platform to support decentralized applications and smart contracts. Buterin had previously contributed within the Bitcoin developer community and found limitations to the Bitcoin scripting language including lack of Turing-completeness, value-blindness, lack of state, and blockchain-blindness. Ethereum was formally announced at the North American Bitcoin Conference in MiamiMiami, Florida.
The Metropolis release will be split into two parts - the first of which called Byzantium was for released on block 4,370,000 on October 16, 2017. The Byzantium release will introduce privacy features zk-snarks and zero-knowledge proofs to the ethereum blockchain, a feature added due to collaboration with the developers of Zcash including Zooko Wilcox. Additionally, the Metropolis release will include account abstraction, returndata, and revert capabilities. The release date for second part of metropolis named ConstantinopleConstantinople has not yet been determined.
The last planned release of ethereum named Serenity plans to include features to transition ethereum from a proof-of-work consensus protocol to the a proof-of-stake based on the CasperCasper protocol being developed by Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir, and the ethereum team. Among other improvements Serenity is also scheduled to include a blockchain sharding to improve scalability.
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