London, United Kingdom, October 22nd - The Ethereum Foundation is pleased to announce the Keynote Speaker of Ethereum’s annual conference DΞVCON1, Nick Szabo. Nick’s keynote will focus on the history of the blockchain, smart contracts and assets on the blockchain.

Nick is a computer scientist, legal scholar and cryptographer known for his research on digital contracts and digital currency. The phrase and concept of “smart contracts” was developed by Szabo with the intent of merging contract law into programming protocols on the Internet.

Recently, Szabo contrasted the use of smart contracts on Ethereum in relation to the Bitcoin blockchain, “If you want to have a flexible general purpose programming environment like programmers have been used to since the 1950s at least, then you’re going to want to use Ethereum because it’s got a Turing complete language and a large state. I sometimes make the comparison of a pocket calculator [Bitcoin] versus, say, a general purpose computer [Ethereum].”

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin noted, “we are thrilled to welcome Nick to DΞVCON1. His pioneering work on smart contracts and the evolution of blockchain technology will add a tremendously valuable perspective to the conference”.

DΞVCON1 will be held from November 9th-13th at Gibson Hall in London, UK. It will feature five days of technical presentations and events on research and core protocols, decentralised application (dApp) development, and industry and social implications.

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain protocol that executes smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.

Ethereum is how the Internet was supposed to work. 

###