Welcome to our community. Ethereum is a smart computing platform that uses the blockchain. This forum is for Ethereum tech discussions and related technologies.

• BBC explains Ethereum

• Ethereum the world Computer

• Download the Official Ethereum Wallet

• Build your own cryptocurrency

• Using the Wallet part 2: build a Democratic Autonomous Organisation

• Using the Wallet part 3: build your own transparent Central Bank

• Learn Solidity, the main language for smart contracts

• Build apps using Meteor and the ethereum tools

• Suggested standards if you are building a app that displays ethereum addresses

• Taylor put together a great list of all the information you need about the current upcoming phase, Homestead

• Devcon1 (2015) playlist

• Devcon0 (2014) playlist

• Do you have to use Meteor for building Dapps? Not at all! You can use any frontend GUI you prefer (even plain javascript), just connect to your node. We just use it internally for our Dapps and our lead Dapp Developer Fabian has built a lot of useful tools for that platform.

• How do I include web3.js on my apps? Here's a primer

• How can I store big files on the blockchain? Swarm and IPFS

• Is ethereum based on bitcoin? No, we use bitcoins underlaying technology, the blockchain, but Ethereum is a separate Blockchain. Ethereum has one of the first working implementations of bitcoin side chains so you can easily and quickly exchange ether and BTC.

• What tools should I use to develop and build apps? Ether.camp and Mix

• What other cool apps are being built? see this awesome constantly updated list

• What's the future of Ethereum? We are planning a switch to Proof of Stake in the near future. We are also investigating scalability solutions and how to store secrets on the blockchain

• No, I mean, how can I use ethereum to get information about the future? Augur and Gnosis are building prediction markets that try to gather the best information about uncertain future events

• No, but I want to discuss future price movements by scribbling graphs on trading charts! Then you should go here (not moderated by us).

• How many ethers are there? How is that calculated? There are about 77 million ethers in existence and every new block (an average of 15 seconds) creates 5 new ether. This number can never be increased, but could be drastically reduced when we switch to the more cost effective Casper consensus algorithm.

• What is 'Gas'? Every contract has a fixed computational cost that which is the result of which kind of call it executes. These costs are fixed by the protocol level, but to avoid having them fluctuate too much they are set in gas instead of ether. Every user selects the gas price they are willing to pay when they send a transaction or execute a contract and every node is free to accept that price or not, based on their minimum gas price, amount of transactions and other network conditions.

How do I update my wallet?

The wallet is an interface to the node. This means you can have multiple copies of the wallet, or overwrite your old copies without a problem

How do I backup?

Open the wallet, go to accounts > backup and save those folders

Do I need to download the full Blockchain?

Yes. Light clients are on the pipeline and before that there are some updates that will optimize and speed up the time it takes.

Is it safe to store my ether or import my presale wallet?

Yes. Of course risk is relative and you should keep your computer protected from malware and wallet backed up. The wallet is still beta but at this point this is more related to crashes and other issues that might make it harder for a non geek to launch the wallet. But the chances of actually loss of ether are relatively small at that point and probably smaller than an exchange getting hacked