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e working out the finer details of how blockchain-based timestamping can improve transparency in the supply chain，or how smart contracts can simplify the archaic processes that are currently being used in trade finance，or how decentralized clearing networks based on consortium chains can createamore egalitarian and efficient alternative to the central clearing parties that dominate many financial markets today.

（在我22岁时，除了12年的编写代码经验外，我并没有多少年的行业经验，而这12年中的前6年里的大多数时间我都在写电脑游戏以及花上千小时玩它们；因此，我也不是一个能够出色地解释基于区块链的时间戳能够如何增加供应链的透明度的人，也不能完美地描述智能合约如何能够简化当前贸易金融中的陈旧流程，抑或基于联盟链的去中心化清算网络如何能够创造一个更为公平、高效的替代品来替换当前主导金融市场的中心化清算方式。）

Rather，the contribution thatIaimed to make to society with Ethereum is the opposite:createahighly generalized platform that includesahighly flexible programming language，and so can be employed for any application in any industry with maximum ease.We would deal with the challenge of making the underlying blockchain layer as scalable，efficient，generalized and secure as possible，giving application developers the freedom to focus on building the business logic of their application itself.At the time thatIoriginally came up with the idea for Ethereum，I expected that it would fail;it seemed too good to be true，and soIthought that within a weekIwould get five smart cryptographers replying back to the email containing my whitepaper，explaining to me some very good mathematical reasons why it could not work.And yet，that never happened; instead，afterayear and eight months of development，the project launched，and the blockchain has been running smoothly ever since，with thousands of users，tens of thousands of transactions per day and over a hundred applications either under development or already deployed.

（然而，我所致力的通过以太坊向社会所做的贡献却恰恰与此相反：以太坊致力于创造一个高度通用化的平台，它包含了高度灵活的编程语言，从而不仅实现了各种产业的适用性，也最大限度简化了应用过程。我们所需要做的是处理好来自区块链层上关于延展性、效率、通用性以及安全性的挑战，从而给应用开发者提供足够的自由空间以专注于完成他们自身商业逻辑的构建。在我最初想到以太坊这个点子的时候，我觉得它是会失败的，因为它看起来太完美了，从而变得不那么真实，于是我认为在一周以内就会有5位聪明的密码学家回复我以太坊白皮书的邮件，并通过一些很好的数学原理向我解释为什么它不会成功。然