First, I want to highlight how it’s the DAO.LINK initiative that made releasing this Proposal to the public possible. The Ethereum Computer and its app/dapps ecosystem forming a Universal Sharing Network is an ambitious project, on a scale which goes far beyond what could be achieved with a few hundred thousand dollars worth of seed money. The Ethereum Computer is a moonshot: a project that, if successful, will redefine how we think about blockchains not just in our niche of cryptography but in the mainstream media.

An early prototype of the Ethereum Computer, shown here by Lefteris Karapetsas at MWC16 where it won the 4YFN IoT Award. Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Canonical, second from the right.

At the core of our Proposal: Renting, selling or sharing anything — without middlemen Anywhere where there are underused assets such as temporarily vacant apartments, there is an opportunity to make a profit using the Universal Sharing Framework, powered by the Ethereum Computer. The Ethereum Computer enables both consumers and businesses to turn their assets into income: Airbnb apartments become fully automated, wifi routers can be rented on demand and unused office spaces get a new lease on life. It’s the future infrastructure of the Sharing Economy.

In addition to the core Slock.it management and development team, we expect to recruit and make available a multidisciplinary matrixed team of Project Managers, Software Engineers, Electronic Engineers, Distribution Specialists, Graphic Designer, UX/UI Designers, Partnership Managers, Quality Assurance, Marketing resources (including PR agency) and an administration team. The DAO.LINK interface is making this possible, bridging the ‘old school’ world of office space, payroll and suppliers with the automated, immutable world of the blockchain. DAO.LINK gives Slock.it UG a real shot at deploying a world class, mainstream consumer electronic platform.

Potential Beyond the Sharing Economy

It doesn’t stop there. Today there are 5,000 or so full Ethereum nodes. 99% of them are probably mining farms running the Go client. Even a relatively small factory run of 100K Ethereum Computers would decouple the number of full nodes on the network, and I’m talking about the *full stack*​ , sister protocols included.

When Ethereum switches to PoS (Proof of Stake), the funds being staked will need to stay online on a platform that require not only software but also hardware security. The Ethereum Computer is uniquely placed to become that platform: a small, relatively inexpensive, always on, always up to date and secure platform thanks to its Trusted Execution Environment. Forget Cold Storage, Secure Hot Wallets will be all the rage when PoS comes around in 2017, in perfect time for the Ethereum Computer release.

Let’s paint this red, shall we?

Yes, the sharing economy plays a big part in the Ethereum Computer story. But the Ethereum Computer is also going to help paint the Ethereum Node map red. It’s going to establish protocols such as Whisper and Swarm/IPFS as the defacto standard for decentralized messaging and storage, respectively. If you think that’s exciting, wait till you see the all the new ones that will come later, such as decentralized computing (Golem), or sensor-driven Oracles.

I’m incredibly excited about the project’s potential. The last time I felt this thrilling mix of hope and excitement in a team was in the early days of Ethereum, when we didn’t quite know how things would turn out but we all knew the work we were doing was genuinely meaningful.

The Ethereum Computer will kickstart the decentralized economy and cement blockchain technology in the mainstream’s eyes.

You can now download the Proposal on our website at https://slock.it/ or directly on this link. You can also discuss on this thread at daohub.org.

As usual, do not hesitate to come and ask questions in our slack on http://slack.slock.it:3000.