ETH Basics: Beginner Boost | Elizabeth Sullivan

Hey everybody. Uh thank you and welcome to uh day two here at ETH Denver. Uh we are on the New France Village stage where we're going to have uh storytelling and uh new media programming for you today. My name is Haime Linde. I am with Say Labs and um I'm a huge believer in stories.

I think storytelling is like one of the essential things that kind of separates humans from animals. I spent many years as a writer and journalist and um really excited to bring to you what we have uh scheduled. Uh the programming will run from now uh until 12:50 p.m. Um and you know the goal is to try and understand what storytelling means in crypto specifically and what that means more broadly in terms of you know marketing and GTMs and how we reach our users, how we reach our developers.

Um, you know, stories are not easily defined, but in crypto, we kind of think of them as narrative or a kind of cluster of ideas that, you know, stick with people for whatever reason. Um, which is all to say stories are kind of mysterious. They're hard to pin down. And as if to make my point, um, you know, two two of the slots we have today, one of them is titled the future is new media and the other one is titled the future of marketing is offline. So um, I'm not saying that one of these is right or wrong.

They're probably both simultaneously true. Uh, I'm can't promise we will get to the bottom of these mysteries today, but we are going to try. Uh, and to kick us off, our first speaker is author Elizabeth Sullivan with a no judgment intro to Ethereum. Thank you very much.

Hello friends, welcome to Eat Denver. All right. Before I start, I want to assure you if you're a plus one here, if you're brand new, if you find yourself just kind of nodding politely along when we speak, this is the stage for you. You're in the right place. You're exactly where you need to be.

Now, you don't need to understand everything today. And I'm not trying to be here to make you an expert in Ethereum. We're just going to give you enough so that the rest of the conference clicks. I have had experience in this. I've written over a dozen children's books explaining basic blockchain technology concepts to kids.

So, this is this is right where you need to be if you either want to explain it to somebody who doesn't get it or you're not quite sure yourself. We're just going to run through a few things real quick. Now, the easiest way to understand Ethereum is it's not a company. It is not a coin. It is not an app.

Ethereum is a network of global computers run individually by what we call nodes. So instead of one company owning everything, everyone has a share in it when they partake in the Ethereum system. Now, the internet is amazing at sharing information and Ethereum adds the ability to share things like money and ownership and agreement. So, let's say if the internet changed the way that we communicate, Ethereum changes the way that we coordinate. You following me here?

So, Ethereum is more like an operating system. Uh, just like your phone runs apps, Ethereum runs decentralized apps. And I want to make a note here that Ethereum isn't the app. Ethereum is the app store. Now, let's talk ETH.

ETH or Ether is the native currency of Ethereum. So, ETH is used to pay for things like fees and run apps, move value, and to secure the network. So, if Ethereum is the highway, ETH is the gas in the tank. Now, gas is simply the fee that's paid to use Ethereum. Anytime the network has to do work, someone has to pay for that computation.

So the more complex actions, the more gas. The more activity on the network, the more gas. Gas isn't random. Gas is math. You might hear the word wallet as you're walking around the conference.

You might have heard it before. A wallet is not just where you store your crypto. It's also your login, your identity. It is your signature and it is your proof of ownership. Your wallet is you on the internet.

So, I want you to understand this. You don't like you don't create an account. You own one. And we're going to go to the golden rule here. If it's not your keys, it's not your crypto.

Just keep that in mind. Now, you're going to also hear about smart contracts. Smart contracts is really just code that execute automatically when certain conditions are met. So, really, if you wanted to simplify this for someone, think of a vending machine. Insert money, enter code, predictable outcome.

There's going to be other projects around here that work off of not just Ethereum. They will work on other blockchains. So, just want to reiterate what blockchain is real quick. It's a shared digital notebook and it has thousands of computers that have the exact same copy. So, it's incredibly difficult to edit.

It really can't be changed. And so that's why we say don't verify, don't trust, but verify because on the blockchain you can see everything. Now Ethereum isn't just for developers, it's for artists, and it's for gamers. It's for educators. It's for innovators.

It's for government. Ethereum is really for anyone who wants to own what they have. It is for people who want ownership. So, as you walk around here, hopefully you understand that we're very excited to talk to you and we might use a lot of big words and you might need to tell us, hey, can you explain it to me like I'm a fifth grader or I'm new here. I just need to know the basics.

But if this helps at all, those are the basics of what Ethereum is. And I hope that you enjoy the rest of the conference. I'm going to hand it back. Thank you.