Ethereum’s unexpected future direction | Ethereum Foundation Blog

Ethereum has been preparing what we consider to be the most exciting digital alliance since IBM and Microsoft partnered so successfully on the IBM PC. We know that you’ve been anticipating great things from Ethereum and we are delighted to present you with this exciting and unexpected news.

As you know, mining in Ethereum is best done on graphics cards. However, industrial scale buying of expensive graphics cards to mine re-creates the centralized mining cartels which are so much a part of the Bitcoin landscape. We would like to be more decentralized than that, and after much consideration and quiet discussion, we would like to announce our durable solution to the mining decentralization problem: Valve.

Valve’s Steam is rapidly heading for 100 million users, most of whom have serious graphics hardware at their disposal. Valve has the clout to get mining software on to the majority of those machines simply by making it available to users and asking them nicely to download it, in exchange for participation in the network and the chance to make a little credit – redeemable for future Steam purchases and downloadable content. Basically this is Ethereum-on-Steam: Steamium, as we are calling it.

This solution solves many of Valve’s problems on creating meaningful value for gamers beyond simply having fun too – transferable digital property living on the new Steamium blockchain will let players buy, sell and trade where appropriate, with smart contracts to prevent cheating, cartelization and illicit sales that could harm the underlying function of the games and the network.

Of course, Steam OS and Steam Machines will likely be Steamium-native products, with block chain technology and smart contracts embedded at every level of their function, from verifying and validating software updates through to securing user accounts and allowing users to communicate and transact. Our new project intends to go as far as it is possible to go in pushing forwards both gaming and operating systems technology with these new products.

One more thing.

Steamium will be integrated with and released along side of the eagerly-anticipated Half Life 3.