2. Agenda
• Introduction, Bob Summerwill (Ethereum Foundation)
• Quick introductions (~10mins each)
• What is Bitcoin? (Brian Deery, Factom)
• What is Ethereum? (Bob)
• What is Hyperledger? (Chris Ferris, IBM / Hyperledger)
• What is Factom? (Brian)
• Austin Blockchain for Business Meetup, Pete Harris (Lighthouse Partners)
• Anybody else want to speak?
• And then mingle …
3. What is Ethereum?
• White paper from Vitalik Buterin in Dec 2013 (aged 19)
• “Bitcoin 2.0” - Smart contract platform protocols
• ETH crypto currency is “fuel”, not end goal (but has $1B market cap)
• POW blockchain with pseudo-Turing complete VM
• Uses accounts, not UXTO
• Built to be very Light Client friendly (implementation ongoing)
• Transitioning to Proof of Stake in the next year or so (Casper, sharing),
with modelling showing likely 10,000x improvements in throughput
• There are 8 implementations of the protocol / VM-spec
5. Corporate interest
• Blockchain-as-a-service on Microsoft Azure
(independent Haskell implementation by BlockApps)
• Used by IBM and Samsung in Project ADEPT and
MTN project
• Used by Eris Industries and R3
• Canonical partnering with Slock.it and ConsenSys
• Rubix by Deloitte - Enterprise offering
6. Built on Ethereum?
• Augur (prediction market)
• Digix (digital gold)
• Slock.it (smart locks)
• Maker (stable currency)
• ConsenSys (galaxy of companies)
• uPort (identity)
• Balanc3 (triple entry accounting)
• Transitive Grid (peer-to-peer energy trading)
• Ujo music (peer-to-peer music)
• “The DAO” (hub for dispersing funds, raised $148M so far!)
7. Ethereum Foundation
• The Ethereum Foundation oversees Ethereum
• Swiss HQ-ed non-profit organization
• Initially funded by $18M crowdsale in 2014
• Employees and contractors around the world, with
development hubs in Berlin and Amsterdam
• Have extremely long-term blockchain research aims,
as “engineering” is increasingly happening outside the
Foundation - ie. ConsenSys, ETHCORE.