Birth (1 of 7)

Deposits into Ethereum's public sale were hosted in 2014 by BTC address 36PrZ[...]. This piece plots most depositors who purchased approximately 10,000 or more ether in 2014. This is depicted on the left, as edges on a connection graph, flowing into this deposit address. A year later, Ethereum's mainnet went live, with ether flowing from the GENESIS block. Edges to the right depict the first transactions from GENESIS. The first transactions that spring from these same large BTC depositors are shown, but now in ETH, representing the birth of a new meshwork that would found ICOs, DeFi, NFTs, and more.

Nodes and edges are taken directly from a subset of on-chain data. Intensity of the color indicates multiple transactions between wallets. Edges are rendered with Fruchterman-Reingold, an algorithm that positions wallet addresses on this graph. Randomization is done by seeding Fruchterman-Reingold with the Unix timestamp associated with the first wave of transactions to 36PrZ[...] and Vitalik Buterin's blog post about the ether sale (7/22/14).

• 7 editions
• Square, high-quality JPG (linked in unlockable content)
• Scalable vector-quality PDF (linked in unlockable content)

Ethstory, Original 4 in Series 1: "36PrZ (Conception)"

The first series "36PrZ (Conception)" illustrates some basic elements of pre-Ethereum history. All are based on actual data, structured and laid out in a manner that produces visuals that relay this early significance. Each original was generated using thousands of pieces of data drawn from original sources, including Ethereum documentation and on-chain activity. The first series is in a dark theme, connoting chain archaeology like the study of etchings made permanent on a cave wall. The cave's dark surrounding signals something intriguing behind these etchings, of human intentions before knowing their future course.