Ethereum Whitepaper

The Ethereum whitepaper, published in 2014 before Ethereum launched, is kept online as a reference, though the site states that it no longer reflects Ethereum today. The paper describes Ethereum as a blockchain with a built-in, Turing-complete programming language for creating contracts that encode arbitrary state transition functions. Changes since 2014 cited on the site include the move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in The Merge in 2022, Layer 2 scaling solutions, and DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs emerging as major use cases.