It’s been a hectic fortnight. For those interested, I thought it was high time for another update. If you are unfamiliar, I’m Gavin, the founder of Ethereum and one of the three directors, along with Vitalik and Jeffrey, of Ethereum ÐΞV, the development entity that creates Ethereum technology and anything related to it.
After recruitment for DEV Bucharest with help from Mihai Alisie and the lovely Roxanna Sureanu, I spent the week at home (and coincidentally, with my family). Ethereum HQ is in Zug, Switzerland. During this time I was able to get Whisper, our secure identity-based communications protocol, up and running quickly and ended up with a small IRC-like ÐApp that was easy to use, as demonstrated by the example. For those interested, you can find more information here on Whisper in the Ethereum Github Wiki. Here is a screenshot; follow me on twitter for more! Additionally, I assisted in finalizing the PoC-7 specification. Finally, during our brief time together in Zug, Jeffrey, Vitalik and I drafted our strategy for identity and key management; it will be developed further in the coming weeks.
ÐΞVHUB Berlin
In Berlin, Sarah has been working hard to get the center ready. Here is a Partner Photos page with all the work happening in Berlin. It may not seem like much, but we are on track to make major progress by November. I’m especially pleased with Sarah’s attempts to locate a 1970s authentic barrista espresso maker (-)
I’m pleased to announce that Christian Vömel is joining the team in Berlin to be the Office Manager of ÐΞVHUB Berlin. Christian has many years of experience in international environments and teaching office administration. He will be taking over some of Aeron Buchanan’s duties – our slightly overworked company secretary.
The team grows
We’ve recruited a lot of new people in the last few weeks: Network engineer Lefteris Karapetsas has joined the Berlin team. He has substantial experience in network traffic analysis and deep packet inspection systems. He will help with auditing our network protocols, but like many of our team, he is truly multidisciplinary and will be working on NatSpec, the codename for our natural language formal contract specifications system, which is a key part of our transaction security model.
I’m delighted to announce that Ian Meikle, the talented videographer and co-author of the incredible Ethereum “Koyaanis-glitchy” Brand video, has moved to ÐΞV to help with communications equipment. He is the only person who will be known as Texture, and joined Stephan’s Communications Team to assist with US strategy and oversee global network of meetups, hackathons, and other activities. It’s great to have such a skilled and passionate designer on the team; I’m sure he has some amazing ideas for ÐApps!
Stephan’s Team has grown lately; he’ll be sharing his progress with you in a post.
New advancements
These are just some of the many accomplishments. Whisper PoC-7 and Christoph has continued his excellent work with the test repository. Christian has made great progress with the Solidity language; as he put it recently, Solidity was just compiled a few hours ago for the testnet Blockchain.
Marek has carefully ported the C++ client to a unified JSON-RPC. Javascript front-end is linked to the Go client. Meanwhile, Alex has been working on the C++ cryptographic front-end. He has done a fantastic job of reducing overheads and strange dependencies.
