Conference, Alpha Testnet, and Ether Pre-sale Updates

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Any information regarding ether sales in this post may be very outdated and inaccurate. For sale information, please refer only to the latest blog posts and official materials on ethereum.org.

Ethereum received an incredible response at the Miami Bitcoin Conference. We traveled there expecting to hear many technical questions as well as philosophical discussions about the purpose of Ethereum. However, the interest and enthusiasm for the project was much greater than we expected. Vitalik’s presentation received both a standing ovation and a queue of questions that took hours to answer.

We have decided to postpone the start of the sale to February 1 because we plan to provide equal opportunity to everyone who wants to participate and as we review the associated logistical and regulatory issues for a token sale of this scale. We will announce the new sales launch date on our official website, Ethereum.org.

The Ethereum project is also pleased to announce the alpha release of the open source testnet client to the community in early February. This gives people the opportunity to participate in the project, experiment with Ethereum scripts and contracts, and gain a better understanding of the technical characteristics of the Ethereum platform. Launching the testnet on this date will give those interested in the fundraiser a chance to better understand what the Ethereum project is before participating.

The testnet will include full support for sending and receiving transactions, an early version of the scripting language described in the white paper, and may or may not include mining. This will also be the first major cryptocurrency project to have two official clients launching simultaneously. One is written in C++ and the other is in Go. A Python client is also in the works. A compiler for Ethereum CLL to Ethereum Script will be released soon.

Note on security

Ethereum sales will not begin on February 1st and any attempt to raise funds at this point should be considered a scam. There have been some scams on the forums, so be careful and only consider information posted on Ethereum.org as legitimate. It is important to emphasize to everyone that only information that is public and published on Ethereum.org should be trusted, as it is highly likely that many people will impersonate us.