[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

[xizmax]

Random site I have no business clicking on.

Content notwithstanding, since when can Newbie ranks post links?

[1715263549]

1715263549

[1715263549]

1715263549

[1715263549]

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[Cryptoholix]

Any projections regarding price in light of the coming sec decision to accept or reject the winklevoss etf?   This should be interesting...

[oneyesoneno]

Ethereum Project NEWS 06-03-2017

Interview with Mel Gelderman, creator of the Tokencard (ERC20-compatible debit card) - 24'40'' in The Bitcoin Podcast, Episode #117: Venturing Into the Web3 
http://thebitcoinpodcast.com/episode-117/

• The Monolith Studio is a Web3 venture production studio. It’s sole purpose is to materialize Ethereum’s transcendental potential by creating next generation Ethereum powered products and platforms for the end-user, on the Web3.
• Ventures will not only provide solutions for the native Ethereum community, but also present innovations that capture the regular user beyond

The Etherian Weekly Slack/Gitter Update: 2.26.2017-3.05.2017 
https://theetherian.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/the-etherian-weekly-slackgitter-update-2-19-2017-3-05-2017/

• tons of updated around Ethereum's space

For whoever wants to listen to the Ethereum blockchain
http://www.etherlisten.com/

• Realtime Ethereum transaction visualizer. Strongly based on BitListen by Maximillian Laumeister

ChronoBank partner with Ethplorer for ChronoWallet implementation 
https://blog.chronobank.io/chronobank-partner-with-ethplorer-for-chronowallet-implementation-21269290143b#.s471sku85

• The time-based cryptocurrency project is using Ethplorer’s powerful blockchain toolkit to extract vital information about Ethereum token operations for their flagship ChronoWallet.

@MakerDAO Is the culmination of what they started. Price stable, global, digital, P2P, money that empowers people #Blockchain #ethereum 
https://twitter.com/kennyrowe/status/838574762255228928

• Maker is a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain seeking to minimize the price volatility of its own stable token — the Dai — against the IMF’s international currency basket SDR

First blood at gdc @firstbloodio 
https://twitter.com/Alex_Amsel/status/837772219166027776

• Wow, these guys raised $5 million in 5 minutes for a cryptocurrency project (heard at blockchain talk #gdc17)

Joey giving a nice #Augur rundown at MIT Bitcoin Expo 2017 https://youtu.be/sQDa5jSGFOk
https://twitter.com/tensorjack/status/838555738087673856

• Augur is a decentralized prediction market built on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows you to forecast events and be rewarded for predicting them correctly.

Ethereum The World Computer 06-03-2017


Women in Blockchain: Carolyn Reckhow @  
https://medium.com/@Melt_Dem/women-in-blockchain-carolyn-reckhow-consensys-f1637ed1cff#.eirs2ihg6

• March is Women’s Month! Each day in March, I’ll be highlighting the story of a different woman in the growing bitcoin and blockchain tech industry. The goal is to showcase the fantastic work these women are all doing at different levels of their respective organizations, and to encourage more women at all stages of their careers join the revolution we’re creating, together!

Building the Hyperconnected Future on Blockchains Paper Released at World Government Summit 
https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/03/Blockchain-Future

• At the recent World Government Summit, Hexayurt Capital and ConsenSys released a paper called “Building the Hyperconnected Future on Blockchains”.
• The purpose of the paper was to provide an Internet of Agreements (IoA) strategy for the next wave of innovation in order to drive Globalization 2.0.
• Ethereum, one of the more popular blockchains, supports smart contracts which allow for agreements to be represented in code and subsequently executed alongside the blockchain. There are many large organizations backing a new Enterprise Ethereum alliance including Accenture, Banco Santander, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft and Intel.

For any new devs to the Ethereum community, try Truffle the most used Ethereum developer framework 
http://truffleframework.com/

• Truffle is the most popular development framework for Ethereum with a mission to make your life a whole lot easier.
• Truffle is written in Javascript in a completely modular fashion, allowing you to pick and choose the functionality you’d like to use.

PI DAY IS NEAR! Ultimate Intro to Ethereum Ðapp Development [Part 13] - How to use the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vHm7JJ7VvI

• This is Part 13 of a 30 part screencast series outlining everything you need to know in order to get started building Ðapps in Ethereum. The series covers creating an Ethereum development environment, how to use various Javascript libraries to interact with the Ethereum protoco

Solidity plugin for IntelliJ Platform
https://github.com/intellij-solidity/intellij-solidity

• Pouf5 @reddit: Really great work! IntelliJ IDEA is the most powerful IDE
• iamhashed @reddit thank you! that is what I was looking for recently
  

1,000 Ether bounty on a proven-correct wallet (just a start with 17 instructions) 
https://medium.com/@pirapira/1-000-ether-bounty-on-a-proven-correct-wallet-with-17-instructions-just-a-beginning-41edadc96321#.mh1tc3wz9

• In the EDCON conference in Paris, I will talk about proving smart contracts correct. There I will release a bounty program. For everybody else who are not attending the conference, I’m putting a note here.

ethereum swarm talk by @mathsguy at #edcon 
https://twitter.com/zeligf/status/838469663952523264

• Swarm Development Update, News from the Swarm Testnet and look to the future

Smart Contracts: The #Blockchain Technology That Will Replace Lawyers http://dld.bz/eYNat  #ethereum 
https://twitter.com/Fintechgrowth/status/838581501969186816

• Smart contracts help you exchange money, property, shares, or anything of value in a transparent, conflict-free way, while avoiding the services of a middleman. The best way to describe smart contracts is to compare the technology to a vending machine. Ordinarily, you would go to a lawyer or a notary, pay them, and wait while you get the documen

Ethereum Virtual Machine for Coq (v0.0.2) 
https://medium.com/@pirapira/ethereum-virtual-machine-for-coq-v0-0-2-d2568e068b18#.b53m13sp8

• Here is the version 0.0.2 of eth-isabelle project. Now it can produce a Coq definition of the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The project provides a formal definition of the Ethereum Virtual Machine for interactive theorem provers. So far, the project provided the definition for Isabelle/HOL and HOL4.

Vlad: About my tweet from yesterday.. 
https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/about-my-tweet-from-yesterday-dcc61915b572#.8p1e6pamt

• Given the level of concern that I inspired in some members of the Ethereum community and an explicit request for a longer form explanation, I feel like I owe you one. So lets get to it.
• Rather than leading with clarification and nuance, let me start on a more personal note.
• Christoph Jentzsch‏ @twitter :@VladZamfir Stay strong. We are all in this together. Thanks for the great work you do.

What is Enterprise Ethereum and why it is important  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvGdJvxCWqg

• Just my thoughts on Enterprise Ethereum and why it is important for Ethereum fans.

[romanekras]

The Next Phase Of The Internet: Joining The Dots

Every day, new solutions are making Ethereum stronger and easier to use for developers and a growing user base. ETHNews explores some of the upcoming projects that are ensuring the platform will play a dominant role in the internet of tomorrow.
Since its initial release in July 2015, the rate of development seen by Ethereum has been nothing short of incredible. The Ethereum value exchange network outperforms Bitcoin in terms of speed, cost, reliability, and energy efficiency and its smart contract platform for programming is gaining traction as the de facto platform for building distributed applications. Very soon, all of the dots for the next phase of the internet will be in place for Dapp developers and users to join together. The internet of tomorrow will be an internet of value and those who participate in it will be able to seamlessly make exchanges using programmable digital currencies, such as Ethereum.

[wallflies]

 

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/circle-still-uses-bitcoin-also-building-ethereum/

Brownworth also explained Circle’s need for state channels and why the company is now building a new platform on top of Ethereum.

[oneyesoneno]

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/circle-still-uses-bitcoin-also-building-ethereum/

Brownworth also explained Circle’s need for state channels and why the company is now building a new platform on top of Ethereum.

Ethereum Project NEWS 07-03-2017

Building a Decentralized Exchange in Ethereum  
https://blog.gnosis.pm/building-a-decentralized-exchange-in-ethereum-eea4e7452d6e#.vev1malmf

• forever (some) guaranteed liquidity for a token once a market maker is funded
• every token can be easily exchanged in any other token (accessible for contracts as well)
• new tokens can be added by funding a market maker with a number of those tokens and either ETH or a bundle of the already added tokens (not decided yet which route we go)
• every price movement in the "real" market will create an incentive to make a trade here and thereby update the price information
• in this form mainly useful as an price oracle by there are ways to extend it to a real DEX

Introducing our new interview series about the people of Ethereum  
https://blog.status.im/ethereum-contributors-series-issue-01-47d557c5452a#.f3ut8kuv5

• we will be introducing two new interview series’ where we will be hearing from the people who are actively participating and contributing to the Ethereum community and from those whom are hard at work creating the best possible DApps out there.
• This issue marks the beginning of our Ethereum Contributors series that will be giving you a glimpse on the thoughts from our community members, so be sure to follow our blog to get the latest updates for this and for the Ethereum DApp Creators series which will be starting soon!

REX Launch Announcements  
http://rexmls.com/

• Rex is connecting vendors, buyers and agents over a fast, flexible and free global listing network.
• Just a quick update, there has been plenty going on behind the scenes on the Rex platform. We are building a great team, putting together a fantasic product and most importantly forging some exciting partnerships in the Real Estate community. Have a read of our latest blog post linked in this post, lots of new stuff, a great intro video, a demo of the UI, we have also updated the Whitepaper to more acurately refect the latest changes. We are very excited for the opportunities 2017 will bring. ~ Cheers Rex team
  

The Dapp Daily 3/6/17 - Updates from the Ethereum ecosystem  
https://dappdaily.com/the-dapp-daily-march-6th-2017-53f057255988#.77p2cn322

• Tons of updates brought to u by The Dapp Daily

"Build your first DApp with Parity" is now published in Alexandria.io (link to the slides below)  
https://alexandria.io/browser/#/4538b59678c4b71aa08df27a70387d5fa5eaa1de0752f1d01d198e1286d25ee9

• Requirements for the workshop: node --version 6 or greater https://nodejs.org/en/ Latest Parity would be nice: https://github.com/ethcore/parity/releases or compile from source: repo: https://github.com/ethcore/parity rust compiler: rustup && rustup update stable: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rustup.rs
  Slides: https://tomusdrw.github.io/parity-dapp-example/#/

Iconomi and the Future of Asset Management  
https://keepingstock.net/iconomi-and-the-future-of-asset-management-be58dfc8a28f#.9ajjzqdca

• Digital Assets
• Portfolio Tokens — Digital Asset Arrays
• The Future

@rh7 @somemikesena "Blockchain + Identity = ❤️" @uport_me @ConsenSysLLC @ethereumproject
https://twitter.com/ConsenSysAndrew/status/838856524369969154

• uPort is an open source software project to establish a global, unified, sovereign identity system for people, businesses, organizations, devices, and bots.

Ethereum The World Computer 07-03-2017


The Promise of Blockchain Is a World Without Middlemen  
https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-promise-of-blockchain-is-a-world-without-middlemen?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr

• Let’s start by examining the potential effects of this on an industry that touches all of our lives – banking. The banking industry is filled with shared resources

Blockchains are a data buffet for AIs - Fred Ehrsam  
https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/blockchains-a-data-buffet-for-ais-883fd2683eac#.pexfqw9a4

• AIs are only as good as the data they are trained on. And while many of the tech giants working on AI like Google and Facebook have open sourced some of their algorithms, they hold back most of their data.
• And oracle systems (a fancy way of saying getting people all over the world to report real world information to the blockchain in a way we can trust) like Augur will inject more data.

EntEthAlliance Technical Vision document v0.3  
https://entethalliance.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/36872/EntEthVision-v3.0-170222.pdf?api=v2

• Enterprise use of blockchain technology has evolved at an almost unfathomable rate over the past 24 months. Through early bitcoin experiments, senior bankers joining start-ups, the launch of Ethereum, the creation of industry consortia, and countless conferences, blockchain has emerged as one of the top enterprise IT trends entering 2017.
• Ethereum is, arguably, the most commonly used blockchain technology for enterprise development today. With more than 20,000 developers globally (our estimate), the benefits of a public chain holding roughly $1bn of value, and an emerging open source ecosystem of development tools, it is little wonder that Accenture observed 'every self respecting innovation lab is running and experimenting with Ethereum'.

Announcing Kovan: the new testnet for Ethereum using Parity's Aura PoA consensus engine.  
https://github.com/kovan-testnet/proposal

• Immune to spam attacks (as Ether supply is controlled by trusted parties)
• Consistent 4 second block time

Rinkeby - Cross client Proof-of-Authority testnet  
https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/225

• For those not aware of how PoA works, it's a very simplistic protocol, where instead of miners racing to find a solution to a difficult problem, authorized signers can at any time at their own discretion create new blocks.
• The challenges revolve around how to control minting frequency, how to distribute minting load (and opportunity) between the various signers and how to dynamically adapt the list of signers. The next section defines a proposed protocol to handle all these scenarios.

Week in Ethereum - March 5, 2017  
http://www.weekinethereum.com/post/158062477803/march-5-2017

• Tons of Ethereum's update and news

Proxy Libraries in Solidity  
https://medium.com/zeppelin-blog/proxy-libraries-in-solidity-79fbe4b970fd#.ruuauyvle

• We recently read some articles about neat tricks and hacks one can do in Solidity. Specifically, Jorge Izquierdo’s article on Library Driven Development and Simon de la Rouviere’s article on ThrowProxy.
• That got us thinking about using those ideas to turn Zeppelin into an upgradeable blockchain-deployed library

[becoin]

Every day, new solutions are making Ethereum stronger and easier to use for developers and a growing user base.

Just hypes. There is nothing that can be used.

[1524mash]

I want the price back to 10$ to buy more

[francism]

I want the price back to 10$ to buy more

At this point very unlikely that the price discount you wish will be granted.

[1524mash]

I want the price back to 10$ to buy more

At this point very unlikely that the price discount you wish will be granted.

You never know what can happen in crypto! I hope....

[Rogerdale]

I want the price back to 10$ to buy more

At this point very unlikely that the price discount you wish will be granted.

You never know what can happen in crypto! I hope....

I think a downward move in altcoins will happen after ETF announcement whatever it will be. If yes, people will sell altcoins and buy Bitcoin to benefit the anticipated upward price movement. If no, people will sell Bitcoin and they will do the same with altcoins (just because every time Bitcoin falls altcoins also fall as it was today).

[IncludeBeer]

I want the price back to 10$ to buy more

At this point very unlikely that the price discount you wish will be granted.

You never know what can happen in crypto! I hope....

I think a downward move in altcoins will happen after ETF announcement whatever it will be. If yes, people will sell altcoins and buy Bitcoin to benefit the anticipated upward price movement. If no, people will sell Bitcoin and they will do the same with altcoins (just because every time Bitcoin falls altcoins also fall as it was today).

...that's not a rule of thumb for market movements. It happens, yes, but not as a "rule".  Take a look at DCR  

[IncludeBeer]

I want the price back to 10$ to buy more

At this point very unlikely that the price discount you wish will be granted.

You never know what can happen in crypto! I hope....

Ya, but it might be a while.  I doubt it will ever go below $7 again though.  Too many projects are finally starting to launch If they do well, it will only cause a beautiful cycle of demand and publicity  

[Mrpumperitis]

7days have passed....pain incoming...btc , alts ....

[Rogerdale]

I think a downward move in altcoins will happen after ETF announcement whatever it will be. If yes, people will sell altcoins and buy Bitcoin to benefit the anticipated upward price movement. If no, people will sell Bitcoin and they will do the same with altcoins (just because every time Bitcoin falls altcoins also fall as it was today).

...that's not a rule of thumb for market movements. It happens, yes, but not as a "rule".  Take a look at DCR  

But for some reason after today's fall Ethereum and Monero depreciated more than Bitcoin...

[IncludeBeer]

I think a downward move in altcoins will happen after ETF announcement whatever it will be. If yes, people will sell altcoins and buy Bitcoin to benefit the anticipated upward price movement. If no, people will sell Bitcoin and they will do the same with altcoins (just because every time Bitcoin falls altcoins also fall as it was today).

...that's not a rule of thumb for market movements. It happens, yes, but not as a "rule".  Take a look at DCR  

But for some reason after today's fall Ethereum and Monero depreciated more than Bitcoin...

Perhaps, but not by much at all. You also need to consider the market caps. Eth and Xmr appear to take a bigger hit, because they have much smaller market caps than btc. I bet if we were to wage the delta in prices vs the ratio in market caps, that depreciation difference wouldn't exist.

[oneyesoneno]

Ethereum Project NEWS 08-03-2017

Vega Fund wants to be a global, decentralized, crowd-managed venture capital and crowdfunding platform built on Ethereum  
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/vega-fund-takes-another-crack-at-ethereum-based-vc-platform-cm757508

• Vega Fund Wants to Be the First Truly Decentralized VC/Crowdfunding Platform on Ethereum
• "Our core focus is to promote the growth of crowdfunding investment opportunities offered by companies, organizations and projects that opt to fund their development through newly issued tokens," notes the fund's website, emphasizing the difference from traditional venture capital funds and money management services.

Swarm City Boardwalk Overview  
https://press.swarm.city/swarm-city-boardwalk-overview-9a362f19411f#.rbto32i02

• Part 1: Basic Boardwalk Functionality
• Part 2: A Deeper Look At Boardwalk
• Part 3: Hashtags Explained
• Part 4: Reputation

Golem seeks public bullhorn for decentralized distributed computing!  
https://golem.network/doc/join/201703_golem_co.pdf

• Golem Factory, creator of the Ethereum powered “Golem” P2P decentralized compute grid, seeks the near impossible  combination  of:  skilled  public  communicator,  community  infiltrator,  and  knowledgeable
  decentralization  evangelist,  for  a  full time  role  to  begin  immediately.  You  will  be  responsible  for  one  or more critical aspects of communicating what Golem is, helping to paint a picture for various communities of both how it will be used, and how it can help to solve community specific problems

The Dapp Daily 3/7/17 - Updates from the Ethereum ecosystem  
https://dappdaily.com/the-dapp-daily-march-7th-2017-e0ca4c8ae8a9#.m2uzqn956

• Tons of updates around Ethereum's space

Decentralized market on Ethereum: "Bitboost – Ecommerce Redefined" (think OpenBazaar, SafeMarket, Freemarket)  
http://www.bitboost.net/

• The block is a decentralized trading platform, eliminating the high fees of traditional e-commerce, while adding privacy and encryption. The platform is built on the decentralized Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts. No personal information or bank account is required to use it, and messages between buyer and seller are encrypted.
• The Block is built on the decentralized Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts. This means that it lives on the Ethereum blockchain, on thousands of computers world-wide

Ether Echo - The Confidence in Your Privacy  
https://etherecho.com/

• The Magic Contract is a personal engine for data encryption and decryption. It is generated by the Ether Echo service for each individual customer by the random number generator.
• The contract shall be registered on the side of blockchain of Ethereum and provide access to its functionality based on the principles of decentralized authentication system.

REIDAO Introduction Animation - How It Works  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVpLueqS2cI

• A quick introduction on one of the potential use case in having digitised real estate ownerships.

Mainstreet Investment analytical report from ICOrating
http://icorating.com/project/35/Mainstreet-Investment

• Hello all, We are the ICORating Team, We prepared an Investment Review of Mainstreet Inv. The project is interesting primarily because it allows users to become investors in the sectors of the world economy, that were previously unavailable to them because of the financial, geographical and professional restrictions. The MI product is a type of a digital share or a digital derivative, which is based on a security portfolio. In addition, the project attracts the attention due to the a controversial biography of Charlie Shrem - one of the co-founders.

CodeTract - Try our Token Auction beta using Mist/Parity/Metamask  
https://medium.com/@codetractio/trying-our-token-auction-smart-contract-cfeab8814326#.3wilxq38o

• Token Auction is a smart contract on Ethereum that enables on-chain exchange of standard tokens. In this iteration, settlement happens once a day with an externally fed but publicly verifiable settlement price. An external price is used instead of the equilibrium price so as to jump-start the liquidity of the auction and prevent price gaming due to initial low liquidity. It is an alternative to centralized and decentralized exchanges and is the primary way to obtain our gold token, GCT.

Ethereum The World Computer 08-03-2017


William Mougayar: The Ethereum Ecosystem is Strong and Getting Stronger  
http://startupmanagement.org/2017/03/07/the-ethereum-ecosystem-is-strong-and-getting-stronger/

• Edcon – State of Ethereum Ecosystem – Mougayar from The Business Blockchain
• The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
• Ethereum is Finally Marketing Itself

Next Solidity release will have a lot of bugfixes  
https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/blob/develop/Changelog.md

• The Solidity Contract-Oriented Programming Language
• To get started you can find an introduction to the language in the Solidity documentation. In the documentation, you can find code examples as well as a reference of the syntax and details on how to write smart contracts.

Embark 2.4.0 - Continuing the voyage towards real Decentralised Applications  
https://github.com/iurimatias/embark-framework/releases/tag/2.4.0

• A lot of work went under the hood in this release. Embark now starts 7 times faster, and the number of dependencies have been cut in half. It installs faster, starts faster, it's more stable and more modular than ever before.

UK's First Ethereum Focused Blockchain Conference April 2017  
www.blockconf.co.uk

• Blockconf UK will bring together programmers and businesses from across the UK to inform people on the uses, possibilities and industry application of Ethereum & blockchain. Attendees will gain insight from the thoughts and experiences of the leaders who have driven the growth of what started as a small community and is now a £20 billion, world-changing industry.
• The two-day event, taking place on 19th and 20th April between 9:00am and 5:30pm, will feature businesses that are actively engaged with the Ethereum Project, The conference also features top speakers and blockchain start-ups from within the ecosystem including American business man and founder of computer software company McAfee Associates, John David McAfee.

The Possibilities and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance  
https://medium.com/@SingularDTV/the-possibilities-and-the-enterprise-ethereum-alliance-3a11693399d2#.hj49ayk7f

• In October, 2016, JP Morgan Chase unveiled Quorum, an effort to extend blockchain technology with “A permissioned implementation of Ethereum supporting data privacy.” The point of the “permissioned” aspect was that it could allow interaction between public and private (permissioned) blockchains. Whether it worked or not (I have only glanced at the code, not tried to run it) this shows something significant about how financial companies think about blockchain technology.

Understand #Ethereum in 15 minutes with @Blockgks #guide #beginner http://buff.ly/2my8Urq  
https://twitter.com/ConsenSysLLC/status/839207103860473856

• What is Ethereum Guide? Beyond Bitcoin & first generation decentralized applications

Join @gavofyork and myself in #Paris for #MerkleWeek to learn about #ethereum,#smartcontracts and more @EurekaCertif http://www.merkleweek.com/conference  
https://twitter.com/LefterisJP/status/839068587465768960

• Training and keynotes to understand the Distributed Autonomous Consensus behind Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols. Paris March 9, 2017

[romanekras]

Circle Mobile App Integrates Ethereum For Smart Contract Payment Channels

Circle’s new Spark protocol is a smart contract driven approach for utilizing state channels to keep mobile peer-to-peer transaction costs low while providing added security and privacy.
On day two of MIT’s Bitcoin Expo 2017, Circle Principal Engineer Anders Brownworth gave a presentation that focused on Circle’s latest updates, which include its newest Ethereum-based protocol known as Spark. The Spark protocol will allow Circle to create permissioning contracts to be built into the core of the protocol. The core permissioning contract acts as an authority by requiring smart contracts to ask permission from it before any function is executed. Permissioning contracts will also point to the latest version of a smart contract and notify the core when a new version of that contract is available.

[Zinkin]

There are many good news recently, but the price has not rise a lot.

[romanekras]

Ropsten To Kovan To Rinkeby: Ethereum’s Testnet Troubles

Ethereum’s Ropsten testnet was suffering from a spam attack that was slowing down block times significantly. This led to the birth of the Parity-only Kovan testnet and the proposal of the cross-client Rinkeby testnet.
Ethereum’s Morden testnet ran from July 2015 to November 2016. While anyone using Ethereum can create a testnet, Morden was the first official public testnet. Due to long sync times stemming from a bloated blockchain, and consensus issues between the Geth and Parity clients, the testnet was rebooted and reborn as Ropsten.
Ropsten ran smoothly as the public testnet until the end of February 2017. According to Péter Szilágyi, a core developer for Ethereum, the end of February is when “malicious actors decided to abuse the low PoW and gradually inflate the block gas limits to 9 billion (from the normal 4.7 million), at which point sending in gigantic transactions crippling the entire network. Even before that, attackers attempted multiple extremely long reorgs, causing network splits between different clients, and even different versions.”