Early Days of Ethereum

Nick Szabo is an American computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer best known for pioneering the concept of smart contracts and designing Bit Gold, a precursor to Bitcoin.

Smart Contracts

In 1994, Szabo wrote an introduction to the concept of "smart contracts" — self-executing agreements with the terms directly written in code. He expanded on the idea in 1996, proposing a digital marketplace built on automatic, cryptographically secure processes. This concept became one of the foundational ideas behind Ethereum.

Bit Gold

In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called "Bit Gold." While never implemented, Bit Gold has been called "a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture." The system proposed participants dedicating computer power to solving cryptographic puzzles, with solutions sent to a Byzantine fault-tolerant public registry — an early description of what would become proof-of-work.

Connection to Ethereum

Szabo's work on smart contracts directly influenced Vitalik Buterin's vision for Ethereum. The Ethereum white paper explicitly builds on Szabo's concept of smart contracts as a core feature of the platform, extending them into a Turing-complete programmable blockchain.

Szabo spoke at DEVCON1 in London in November 2015, delivering a keynote on the history and future of smart contracts.