Author: Robert D. Knight, CoinTelegraph; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
The Ethereum Initial Coin Offering (ICO) — one of the most important events in the history of cryptocurrency — took place on July 22, 2014, just over 10 years ago.
The ICO lasted 42 days, and as of September 2, participants could purchase 2,000 Ethereum.
This article interviews Nick Johnson, lead developer of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and former member of the Ethereum Foundation, about Ethereum and how it changed his life and the cryptocurrency space forever.
“It foreshadows a huge change in how we think about cryptocurrencies and blockchains because while the Bitcoin EVM [Electronic Virtual Machine] had some programmable capabilities, it was designed to be very limited,” Johnson noted. “Ethereum really develops the idea of a general purpose Turing-complete chain as something that can be valuable.”
With the advent of general purpose Turing-complete chains come smart contracts and a higher degree of programmability. As Johnson says, Ethereum is fulfilling its legacy.
“You just have to look at the sheer amount of applications that weren’t even thought of when it was originally designed, like [non-fungible tokens], ENS. All the automated market makers and things like that [...] All of these things are only possible because the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik are building a general purpose chain, as opposed to something that’s solely focused on value exchange.”
How special is Ethereum?
Before the Ethereum ICO, other cryptocurrencies tended to be simple variations on the Bitcoin theme. For example, Litecoin.
From the beginning, Ethereum was different. Cointelegraph asked Johnson what the cryptocurrency would be like if Ethereum had never been developed.
“At some point, someone is going to build something like this,” Johnson said. “But Ethereum made a lot of very smart technical decisions early in the game. You only have to look at the sheer number of Ethereum-compatible chains out there to see the huge impact it has had on the development of the industry.”
This is not to deny the massive impact Ethereum has had on shaping the industry and accelerating its growth.
“I think it moves things along much faster than it would have without it,” Johnson said.
Meet Ethereum
Johnson said he started playing around with Bitcoin in 2014. He bought some, sold some. His curiosity about cryptocurrency was piqued, but ultimately, he became "a little frustrated with its limitations."
“The programmable part of programmable money is what I’m interested in,” Johnson said.
It wasn't until several years later that Johnson returned to the industry.
“In 2016, I was contacted by a large financial services company. I was working at Google at the time, and they wanted to know if I would like to work for them on this thing called Ethereum,” he said.
Johnson interviewed but left with no intention of joining the company, describing the atmosphere as "suit-weary, staid, not very fun."
Ethereum, however, is another matter entirely.
“I started playing around with it and quickly became obsessed with it and started building Ethereum Solidity libraries and stuff like that,” he added. “A few months later, the Ethereum Foundation reached out to me and asked if I’d like to interview for a position, and I jumped at the opportunity.”
The infamous DAO hack
Ethereum’s early days were not without controversy. In 2016, Ethereum launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that raised $150 million.
Designed as a venture capital fund to help grow and build the Ethereum network, the DAO was initially hailed as a huge success, but less than three months after its launch, the DAO was hacked for $60 million.
It's something Johnson won't soon forget, he explained.
“It’s definitely particularly memorable for me because [the hack] happened on a Friday and I was due to start working at the foundation the following Monday,” he said.
In order to combat the theft, the Ethereum network hard forked in July 2016 and rolled back the blockchain to before the hack. At the time, the hack and subsequent fork were two of the most controversial events in the history of cryptocurrency.
Furthermore, not everyone agreed to accept the fork, which resulted in two competing Ethereum chains: Ethereum accepted the fork and its rollback, while Ethereum Classic did not.
Johnson acknowledged the stress and uncertainty of the time, saying "it was very much like a crucible."
“From where we stood at the time, we saw that this was a flaw in the smart contract. But it happened so soon, and we were concerned that it could easily be interpreted as some kind of referendum on the whole system,” Johnson said.
But while the DAO hack was highly controversial in 2016, time heals wounds. In 2024, no one will be thinking seriously about the DAO hack.
The early days and birth of ENS
When Johnson joined the Ethereum Foundation, things were chaotic at first, but soon everything calmed down and the real work began.
Cointelegraph asked Johnson about his work in the early days of Ethereum. Johnson worked with the Swarm team, which developed decentralized data storage, and with Go Ethereum, an interface to the Go programming language originally developed by Google.
Johnson described it at the time as "very loosely managed," which allowed him the creative freedom he sought.
Johnson’s interest in internet infrastructure eventually led him to create the Ethereum Name Service, which is based on the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS).
"We went through an initial iteration that was very different from what we ended up launching. It was more akin to DNS and based on that infrastructure," Johnson said.
However, during the construction process, Johnson learned lessons and reshaped the naming service and the form seen by the public.
“We learned a lot about what would work better in this unique situation and restructured it to work better with ethereum smart contracts,” he said.
The Future of Ethereum
As Ethereum approaches its 10th anniversary, it has matured considerably. In 2022, the network transitioned from a proof-of-work consensus to a proof-of-stake consensus, and in March 2024, Ethereum launched the Dencun upgrade, which reduced Layer 2 transaction costs.
Cointelegraph asked what’s next for Ethereum and the Ethereum Name Service.
For both, the focus is on “L2 and scalability,” Johnson said.
“ENS recently announced our L2 roadmap because we believe L2 solutions are now mature enough that we can build on top of it. We need to build it in a way that works for all chains and preserves functionality,” Johnson said.
Johnson said ENS is “a bit similar” to the broader Ethereum network in this regard, and he predicted that Ethereum’s future will be brighter as scalability continues to improve.
