• ETH was proposed by Vitalik Buterin (a Russian-Canadian programmer), who published a whitepaper in late 2013.
• The project was co-founded with Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, and others in 2014.
• The Ethereum Foundation (a Swiss non-profit organization) was responsible for initial development and promotion.
• The network went live on July 30, 2015.
• It has no single company control, and is maintained by the open-source community and the Foundation.
• Key developers include Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood (who later founded Polkadot).

• The issuance plan includes distribution through mining after the Genesis Block.
• The initial block reward was 5 ETH (later adjusted).
• It launched using Proof-of-Work (PoW) but transitioned to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) on September 15, 2022.
• The goal is to support smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps).
• Long-term supply is regulated through transaction fees and burning (EIP-1559).
• Supplementary data shows ETH was issued via an ICO in September 2014, selling 83.33% of the total supply at 1 ETH = $0.311.

• The total issuance has no fixed cap.
• The initial supply was 72 million coins.
• The crowdsale price was $0.30–$0.36 per ETH (totaling about 2,000 BTC).
• Subscription conditions required purchasing with BTC during the 2014 crowdsale, with a minimum purchase of 0.01 BTC (about 100 ETH).
• ETH can be acquired later through mining or market trading, with no minimum holding requirement.
• The PoS phase requires staking 32 ETH to run a node.

• ETH conducted a public offering (ICO) from July 22 to September 2, 2014.
• The ICO raised about $18.66 million, selling 60 million coins.
• 12 million coins were allocated to early contributors and the Foundation.
• The mainnet went live on July 30, 2015, after which ETH became tradable on exchanges.
• Funds were used for development and promotion.
• The EIP-1559 upgrade (August 2021) introduced a burning mechanism to reduce circulating supply.

• Ethereum plans to build a decentralized computing platform, with ETH as its fuel.
• Goals include:
  • Supporting smart contracts for automated and trusted execution.
  • Providing DApps infrastructure (e.g., DeFi, NFT).
  • Addressing the limitations of Bitcoin (e.g., lack of Turing completeness).
• The long-term goal is to become the global blockchain infrastructure, supporting finance, gaming, and identity management.
• Applications mentioned in the whitepaper include DAO and stablecoins; it later developed into the core of Web3.

• ETH holders have the right to pay Gas fees to execute transactions and contracts.
• In the PoS phase, holders can stake 32 ETH to participate in validation and earn rewards.
• Holders have no governance rights (protocol upgrades are determined by developer and community consensus).
• Miners (PoW) or validators (PoS) have the right to receive block rewards and transaction fees.
• Obligations include maintaining network security and verifying transactions.
• Users must safeguard their private keys, with no central recovery mechanism.
• ETH is not equity; it is purely a utility token; rights are restricted by the protocol.

• Ethereum uses blockchain technology, with ETH as the native token.
• Core technologies include:
  • The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which executes Turing-complete smart contracts.
  • Asymmetric encryption (ECDSA), protecting transactions and ownership.
  • P2P network, with distributed node synchronization.
  • The Gas mechanism, preventing abuse and paying fees.
• It initially used PoW (Ethash) but transitioned to PoS (Casper) in 2022.
• Data is stored on the blockchain; later plans included Layer 2 (e.g., Arbitrum) and sharding to enhance performance.

• Risk factors mentioned include:
  • Hash rate concentration: Mining pools could dominate PoW early on, threatening decentralization.
  • Smart contract vulnerability: Programming errors could lead to fund loss (e.g., the DAO attack in 2016, which resulted in a 3.6 million ETH loss).
  • Scalability limits: High transaction volume may cause congestion and high Gas fees.
  • Economic risk: Reduced rewards after PoS may affect validator participation.

• Ethereum initially used Proof-of-Work (PoW), utilizing the Ethash algorithm.
• Miners competed to generate blocks (about 13-15 seconds per block).
• The Merge" on September 15, 2022, transitioned the network to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
• In PoS:
  • Validators stake 32 ETH.
  • Proposers and committees are randomly selected.
  • The mechanism provides finality.
• PoS reduced energy consumption by 99.95%.
• Rewards are determined by the staked amount and network activity.
• Protocol upgrades (e.g., EIP) are proposed by developers and adopted through community and node consensus.

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