This introductory paper was originally published in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of
Ethereum, before the project's launch in 2015. It's worth noting that Ethereum, like many
community-driven, open-source software projects, has evolved since its initial inception.
While several years old, we maintain this paper because it continues to serve as a useful
reference and an accurate representation of Ethereum and its vision. To learn about the
latest developments of Ethereum, and how changes to the protocol are made, we
recommend this guide.
A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized
Application Platform
Satoshi Nakamoto's development of Bitcoin in 2009 has often been hailed as a radical
development in money and currency, being the first example of a digital asset which
simultaneously has no backing or intrinsic value ↗ and no centralized issuer or controller.
However, another - arguably more important - part of the Bitcoin experiment is the
underlying blockchain technology as a tool of distributed consensus, and attention is
rapidly starting to shift to this other aspect of Bitcoin. Commonly cited alternative
applications of blockchain technology include using on-blockchain digital assets to
represent custom currencies and financial instruments ( colored coins ↗ ), the ownership of
an underlying physical device ( smart property ↗ ), non-fungible assets such as domain
names ( Namecoin ↗ ), as well as more complex applications involving having digital assets
being directly controlled by a piece of code implementing arbitrary rules ( smart
contracts ↗ ) or even blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations ↗
(DAOs). What Ethereum intends to provide is a blockchain with a built-in fully fledged
Turing-complete programming language that can be used to create "contracts" that can
be used to encode arbitrary state transition functions, allowing users to create any of the
systems described above, as well as many others that we have not yet imagined, simply by
writing up the logic in a few lines of code.
Ethereum Whitepaper