Ethereum’s True Rise Began In October 2015
In the past few hours I’ve started to see pieces pop up in news outlets and threads discussing Ether’s price increase over the recent days. Many of the reasons postulated included obvious ones like Microsoft’s Azure announcement, R3 as well as the current discord within the Bitcoin community. These are all pieces of the puzzle, but it’s become very apparent that there were many other factors that fell into place that aren’t being discussed.
The very first factor was Augur’s crowdsale raising over $5 Million Dollars in an extremely bear market (full disclosure, I am on the Augur team). However important this was, it was just the beginning that set the tone and helped build to what has happened in the past few days. The events that occurred in November would be responsible for perpetuating the momentum that Augur created with it’s campaign.
The dates where everything crystalized from my perspective were November 9th until the 13th, those of course being the dates of DEVCON1, the Ethereum-focused conference in London.
On a personal note, I didn’t get a chance to attend the conference (although I was invited by Vitalik to give one of the few non-dev-centric talks). Not attending was a huge regret, although I feel fortunate that I was able to experience this amazing event at home with a killer livestream.
Microsoft’s Azure announcement kicked off the event, something that really set the tone for what was to come, fortunately things actually got better from there. It was the day of project presentations that blew me away. The quality level of each 20 minute presentation was consistently high, something that I hadn’t seen at any of the recent Bitcoin-centric conferences. So many of these projects were fresh ideas by brilliant individuals, for many it was the very first time the world saw what they were working on and damn were they impressive. These projects illustrated the depth of developer interest in this project, clearly demonstrating that the interest was much higher on Ethereum than any other similar blockchain. This was a day where I was blown away by something in this community for this first time in a long time, what blew me away was the talent and ideas this technology can enable.
The conference’s contributions to the current rise of Ether’s market value didn’t stop there. Of course Vitalik’s talk was incredible as he has a charsima and charm that is hard not to find infectious (he’s also a great guy in every interaction I have had with him, something I value equally as much as his brilliance). It then came to the keynote speaker, the grand slam “get” of any convention, Nick Szabo. Szabo’s influence no doubt opened some eyes and got attention, especially as he chose this conference over the multitudes of others.
There was one more unannounced guest, that being musician Imogen Heap. She wasn’t just there to add name value, but she appeared at the end of Vinay Gupta’s talk and quickly discussed the her Ethereum project, Mycelia. Imogen’s presence brought attention to the conference from outlets that would never be interested in such a thing. It was the perfect way to end such a monumental event.
The BBC were filming and my brilliant Augur teammate Dr. Jack Peterson did a fantastic explanation of the technology, one that I am extremely jealous of as it was eloquent and perfect.
This event happened in November, I raved about it at the time of the event and decided it would now be a good time to put these pieces back together to highlight the other, underreported aspects that helped to get to this point.
The phrase I keep using this week is that I can’t begin to express how much fun I’m having right now. Seeing the market respond to the amazing things that Ethereum has been involved with in the past few months is just exciting and rewarding as hell.
I sincerely hope that this attention helps shine a spotlight on some of the projects in development that aren’t the big dogs which get tons of press. One place I would encourage everyone from newbies to veteran community members to check out is the wonderful “State of the Dapps” page which highlights 149 projects that are currently in development on Ethereum.
These projects deserve attention and I have a feeling we are in the beginning of a new phase where some will get this attention. All I can say is hold on….it’s going to be a fun ride in the upcoming months!
Check out my personal website TonySakich.com, follow me on Twitter @TonySwish and check out Augur.net and Ethereum.org
