Early Days of Ethereum

Preserving the history and stories of the people who built Ethereum.

Steve Dakh

Steve Dakh

Developer (KryptoKit)

(Jan 2014 to ???)

Steve Dakh was listed as a developer on the original Ethereum announcement, through his role at KryptoKit. He was one of the earliest people involved in the project.

Satoshi Circle

Episode 16 adds substantial detail about Dakh's pre-Ethereum work with Anthony Di Iorio. According to Di Iorio, Dakh posted on Reddit in late 2012 looking for someone with Bitcoin business ideas. Di Iorio replied, flew to New Jersey two days later, and the two quickly partnered on a provably fair gambling product called Satoshi Circle.

Di Iorio later bought Dakh out and sold the business for thousands of bitcoin. He says the proceeds from that sale became the earliest bootstrap funding for Ethereum.

KryptoKit and Early Ethereum

After Satoshi Circle, Dakh and Di Iorio moved into wallet infrastructure with Rush Wallet and then KryptoKit. This helps explain why Dakh appeared in Ethereum's earliest public materials: he was part of the Toronto cluster of wallet builders, meetup organizers, and Bitcoin Decentral collaborators around Di Iorio and Vitalik.

Original BitcoinTalk Announcement

Steve was mentioned in the original BitcoinTalk post in January 2014, although his role there was later written out of history, along with many others:

"Steve Dakh - Developer (KryptoKit)"

KryptoKit was a Bitcoin wallet browser extension co-founded by Anthony Di Iorio. Steve's inclusion in the original announcement reflects the close ties between Ethereum's founding team and the KryptoKit/Bitcoin Decentral community in Toronto, where much of the early organizational work for Ethereum took place.

Miami House

Dakh also appears in the well-known Miami house photo from January 2014, placing him physically inside Ethereum's earliest pre-launch circle.

The Ethereum team at the Miami house

Primary Sources