One of the strengths of Ethereum is its decentralized nature, giving it a wider, more stable base. There are Ethereum project teams in different parts of the world, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Switzerland and Brazil. (For example, Geth was deployed by the Amsterdam team while Eth was produced by the Berlin team.)

If there is a center to Ethereum, it would be in the beautiful town of Zug, Switzerland, home of the Ethereum Foundation that oversees the project’s finances, manages the funds raised in the Ether sale and determines the long-term vision and direction of Ethereum.

Stephan Tual, chief communications officer for the Ethereum project, told Bitcoin Magazine that the new executive director and board members represent a fresh start, a way to reboot the organization.

“[W]e had a very clear goal to recruit from verticals that were varied, ranging from the world of manufacturing, IoT, education, politics, health, finance and more,” he said. “Basically, anywhere where Ethereum could be embedded and make a difference.”

The new foundation executive director is Ming Chan, a Swiss-born Chinese American MIT computer science and media arts graduate, who has extensive experience working with educators, scientists and inventors to found and grow innovative new business ventures.

The new board members are Vitalik Buterin (president of the board), Lars Klawitter, Vadim Levitin, and Wayne Hennessy-Barrett.

For day-to-day decisions an “executive” consisting of Stephan Tual, Gavin Wood and Jeffrey Wilcke is in charge, with assistance from Aeron Buchanan, Jutta Steiner, Kelley Becker and Frithjof Weinert.

How’s the Launch Going So Far?

The launch so far is going far better than expected. The main Ethereum blockchain is in play and already users can access their pre-sale wallets, mine ether at the full reward rate, and use or deploy decentralized applications on the main network.

“We’re delighted with the stability of the network so far, as results have exceeded expectations and more and more developers are generating the Genesis block and joining the network,” Tual said. “Real time statistics on the network health can be viewed at https://stats.ethdev.com ”

“So far the Frontier launch has been exceptionally smooth, due in large part to our intense Olympic test phase, as well as our robust user-guides and the tutorials written by dedicated members of our community,” Ethan Wilding, resident Ethereum philosopher and co-founder of Ledger Labs told Bitcoin Magazine. “This is, however, a development release, and so a willingness to use the command line is required.”

“Most of the questions we’ve had since this launch are from general users eager to learn how to mine ether and get wallet access on the Ethereum platform using command line; we’re always happy to help,” he said. “As our platform is tested further and made even more robust, we will continue to improve upon the user-experience by introducing our graphical user-interfaces for such operations in a future release.”

Bitcoin Magazine will continue to follow this story and keep you informed on new developments.

Photo Roland Zumbuehl / Wikimedia Commons