Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.
Ethereum also provides a cryptocurrency token called ether, which can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant nodes for computations performed. Gas, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network - wikipedia 
YOUTUBE PLAYLIST PLaM7G4Llrb7x5fCSNAQlNCJm0BpZblURj Vitalik Buterin provides a 25-minute technical overview of the ethereum blockchain, start to finish, and explain many of these concepts in detail.
Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale that took place between July and August 2014. The system went live on 30 July 2015, with 11.9 million coins "premined" for the crowdsale. This accounts for approximately 13 percent of the total circulating supply.
In 2016, as a result of the collapse of The DAO project, Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains – the new separate version became Ethereum (ETH), and the original continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC).
(Part of) dev team at Ethereum Dev Con, Berlin 2014
Web 3.0 publishing platform. Purpose of Ethereum is to decentralise the Web. Read more on Wikipedia and Ethereum forum
Referred to as a secure decentralised generalised ledger see gavwood.com
Ethereum is a project aiming to decentralize the internet and return it to its democratic roots. It is a platform for building and running applications which do not need to rely on trust and cannot be controlled by any central authority - ethereum.org
Ethereum is a blockchain-based virtual machine and Web 3.0 platform featuring stateful user-created digital contracts and a Turing-complete contract programming language. Ethereum uses its underlying network unit, Ether, as payment to execute Ethereum contracts as a workaround to the halting problem. In this respect, Ethereum is unlike most cryptocurrencies, as it is not solely a network for transacting monetary value, rather, it is a network for powering Ethereum-based contracts - Wikipedia
# Ethereum Grants
A couple of sources for grants:
* string.technology
* ethereum.org
# See also * History * Architecture * Ecosystem * Criticisms - Ether Camp Hackathon - EVM-C