On July 22, 2014, Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO) launched, marking a pivotal moment in cryptocurrency history just over ten years ago.
On the tenth anniversary of Ethereum, principal developer Nick Johnson discussed his thoughts and memories of the platform.
2,000 Ether ETH$3,491 for every Bitcoin BTC$67,244 was available to participants during the 42-day initial coin offering (ICO) that ended on September 2.
Nick Johnson, the primary developer of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and a former member of the Ethereum Foundation, discussed how ETH altered his personal and professional life.
Johnson said, “While the Bitcoin EVM [Electron Virtual Machine] has some programmable functionality, it’s quite limited by design. This heralded an enormous change in how we viewed crypto and blockchains.” Ethereum significantly advances the notion of a general-purpose Turing whole chain as something precious.
With that, all-purpose Smart contracts and a significantly higher degree of programmability followed Turing’s complete chain. Johnson stated that Ethereum’s heritage is what makes it possible.
“You only need to consider the abundance of uses, such as [non-fungible tokens], like ENS, that weren’t even considered when it was first built. Automated market makers and similar devices are all possible because Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation were creating a general-purpose network instead of something primarily concerned with value exchange.
To what extent is Ethereum unique?
Before the Ethereum initial coin offering, most cryptocurrencies were straightforward takes on the Bitcoin concept. For instance, with only a minor coding modification, Litecoin LTC$72.89 began as a Bitcoin clone.
Ethereum was unique from the start. Johnson was asked what cryptocurrency would have looked like if ETH hadn’t been created.
Johnson stated, “Someone would have built something similar at some point.” However, Ethereum made several extremely wise technological choices early in the game. The abundance of Ethereum-compatible chains is all needed to demonstrate the significant impact ETH had on the industry’s growth.
This is not to downplay Ethereum’s significant influence in reshaping the sector and spurring its expansion.
Johnson states, “I think it moved things along much faster than they would have.”
Getting to Know Ethereum
Johnson stated that he began experimenting with Bitcoin in 2014. He sold a few and acquired a couple. Although his interest in cryptocurrencies peaked, he was ultimately “a bit disappointed with its limitations.”
“What piqued my interest was the programmable portion of programmable currency,” Johnson stated.
A few years later, Johnson’s career path would eventually bring him back to the entertainment business.
In 2016, a major financial services company reached out to me. “They wanted to know if I would like to come work for them on ETH, and I was working at Google at the time,” he added.
Johnson showed up for the interview as scheduled, but he left saying the environment was “suit and tie, staid, and not very interesting,” and he had no intention of working for the company.
But Ethereum was a whole different story.
“I began experimenting with it and quickly became engrossed in it, creating ETH Solidity libraries and other things,” he continued. “I seized the chance when the Ethereum Foundation reached out to me a few months later, asking if I’d like to interview for a position with them.”
The notorious DAO breach
There was some controversy throughout Ethereum’s early years. ETH raised $150 million to build its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in 2016.
Less than three months after its introduction, the DAO was hacked to the tune of $60 million. The DAO was conceived as a venture capital fund to aid in the growth and development of the Ethereum network.
According to Johnson, he will never forget it.
He remarked, “That was particularly memorable for me because I was supposed to start work at the foundation the following Monday, and [the hack] occurred on a Friday.”
In July 2016, the ETH network performed a hard fork to counteract the theft and restore the blockchain to its pre-hack state. The hack and the subsequent split were two of the most contentious events in cryptocurrency history.
Moreover, not all participants consented to the split, leading to the emergence of two rival Ethereum networks: ETH, which embraced the split and its reversal, and Ethereum Classic, which declined.
Johnson remarked that “it was very much a trial by fire,” acknowledging the anxiety and uncertainty of the moment.
“From our vantage point, we could see that this was a smart contract vulnerability. However, since it was so early on, we were concerned that people would have mistaken it for a vote on the system as a whole, Johnson added.
However, time is a great healer of wounds, even though the DAO breach was very contentious in 2016. The DAO attack is no longer a primary consideration in 2024.
The early years and ENS’s founding
After a period of initial chaos, Johnson joined the Ethereum Foundation, but things quickly calmed down, and the real work could start.
Johnson collaborated on the Go Ethereum interface, which dealt with the Go programming language initially created by Google, and the Swarm team, which created decentralized data storage.
It was then, according to Johnson, “very loosely managed,” which gave him the artistic freedom he desired.
Johnson’s fascination with Internet infrastructure ultimately resulted in the development of the ETH Name Service, built on the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS).
“The first iteration we undertook was entirely distinct from the one we ultimately released. According to Johnson, it was built on the same technology as DNS and was far more akin to it.
However, Johnson discovered things during construction that changed the naming service and the version that was visible to the general public.
“We restructured it in a way that works much better with ETH smart contracts after learning a lot about what would work better in this particular situation,” he said.
Ethereum’s future
As Ethereum turns ten, it has come a long way. Proof-of-stake replaced proof-of-work consensus on the network in 2022, while Ethereum introduced the Dencun update in March 2024 to lower layer-2 transaction costs.
What is the future of Ethereum and the ETH Name Service.
Johnson states that “L2 and scalability” are the primary concerns.
Since we think L2 solutions are now developed enough for us to work on, ENS recently revealed our L2 roadmap. Johnson stated, “We have to design it to integrate with every chain and maintain functionality.
According to Johnson, ENS and the more extensive Ethereum network are “sort of the same” in that sense. Johnson also forecasts an even more promising future for ETH as scalability advances.