top | item 14161695

Status – A Mobile Ethereum OS

232 points| state | 9 years ago |status.im

119 comments

order
[+] jonathanstrange|9 years ago|reply
I hate to sound so critical, it sure looks like an interesting project, but could developers of such applications/websites please stop putting everything on their web page in marketing speech? Why do so many FOSS developers imitate the worst aspects of the proprietary, commercial software world?

I looked at the feature descriptions and they are full of meaningless buzzwords like "crowd sourced wisdom". So you've lost a potential user. K.I.S.S.

[+] johnnydoebk|9 years ago|reply
>> marketing speech

>> FOSS developers

I don't think it has something to do with FOSS but rather with blockchain developers. Most projects have nice landing pages but very vague messages.

[+] sonium|9 years ago|reply
The description of the (two) co-founders are 'Cofounder and Thought Leader' and 'Cofounder and Communications & Marketing'. This sounds a lot like they come both from a non-technical background. Maybe this the reason why?
[+] dualogy|9 years ago|reply
> Why do so many FOSS developers imitate the worst aspects of the proprietary, commercial software world?

Just bubble things. Plus the youthful enthusiasm, I remember emulating and cultivating the hype speak from the late 90s / early 00s as a teen. It'll fade by the time the next gen are rushing in.

> FOSS developers

> proprietary, commercial software world

Do these terms even mean much anymore? "Proprietary" means "our SaaS codebase isn't open-sourced but rest assured it's 80% FOSS on the inside anyway". And "FOSS developers" means "let's put some select libs/snippets of our SaaS on Github, it's zero risk/cost plus potential upside in terms of mindshare/image (and of course potentially genuinely useful to some out there, who aren't looking to (or going to manage to) clone us and hey may even contribute fixes or features)".

World has moved on =) in an ironic twist it was MS' FOSS moves the last few months that sealed that perspective for me. (The old m.o. had its charms, but this current m.o. undeniably has evolved to appear much more compelling in many ways for most players)

[+] xjay|9 years ago|reply
There's the web, and then there's the web of electronic brochures (WEB).
[+] m12k|9 years ago|reply
Most likely you are not the audience - hapless investors wanting to get in on the next bubble are.
[+] mathw|9 years ago|reply
I don't even have a clue what it does. I would expect some kind of hint after reading two screenfuls of content.
[+] eat_veggies|9 years ago|reply
I think it's cool. Not everything has to look like Stallman's website
[+] bschwindHN|9 years ago|reply
This app uses re-natal, a wrapper of React Native for ClojureScript. It also uses a ClojureScript framework called "re-frame" for data flow and "reagent" for wrapping React.

It's a pleasure to work with (most of the time, there are hiccups here and there) and you can develop for iOS and Android simultaneously. I highly recommend checking it out.

https://github.com/drapanjanas/re-natal

https://github.com/status-im/status-react/

[+] mej10|9 years ago|reply
Seconded! re-frame/reagent/re-natal are great. Really fun to use.
[+] LeoPanthera|9 years ago|reply
Remarkably similar to Token from Coinbase, which launched just yesterday: https://www.tokenbrowser.com (and which is available in the iOS app store)
[+] carlbennetts|9 years ago|reply
Coinbase are nice people, and I hope Token is a success. If you'd like to compare the two products please do check out the tech stack - Status is completely decentralized, so doesn't rely on any centralised servers :)
[+] j_s|9 years ago|reply
Interesting! I wonder how Apple will get their 30%?
[+] ganwar|9 years ago|reply
You can find a comprehensive list of dapps here: http://dapps.ethercasts.com

Developer activity in Ethereum is increasing at a very fast pace. This is only supposed to accelerate after the upcoming metropolis upgrade hard fork.

[+] adamrezich|9 years ago|reply
I haven't followed Ethereum since the whole DAO debacle. I was very excited about the technology but the way the whole hard fork/Ethereum Classic thing was handled really turned me off. Has progress been made on formally verifying contracts or anything like that? And why aren't more people bothered by the whole hard fork thing?
[+] nexus9|9 years ago|reply
I supported the fork because it was the rational decision to make under the circumstances. I never invested in the DAO or cared about the investors. The simple fact is that the theft was significant enough to cause an unacceptable and pointless security risk to the network.

Fortunately for us, there was a built-in delay in the DAO contract which provided the foundation and community with enough time to engage in public debate and determine the best solution. That solution was to carefully recover all the funds from the attacker without creating any negative externalities on innocent bystanders. In this sense, it was not a rollback as no other transactions were affected. Consensus was achieved on this goal and the community resolved the situation as expected. Despite all the ignorant comments and trolling, the truth is the HF worked out brilliantly.

The extremists, fundamentalists, and other ideologues who rallied to defend the theft because of their false notion of immutability and demented claims about "bailouts" never came close to understanding the severity of the situation. They never had the moral high ground nor the stronger end of the argument. I'm very pleased they didn't get their way.

In my view, the foundation and community handled the DAO debacle in a responsible, decentralized, open-minded, and respectful manner. I was not turned off in the least by the hard fork decision. In fact, it only strengthened my conviction and trust in the Ethereum project.

[+] LeoPanthera|9 years ago|reply
I think the current Bitcoin situation is really showing that rapid, organized hard forks when problems occur is an extremely good thing. Bitcoin is currently frozen in time, since there are two major competing clients, and neither dare make any incompatible changes for fear of creating a fork, and right now neither has a majority.

A decentralized cryptocurrency is a lovely ideal, but in the dirty real world, Ethereum and its ilk will win out.

[+] RexetBlell|9 years ago|reply
I would ask an opposite question, why were so many people bothered? When the fork happened, Ethereum was just a baby (and still is). It was barely out of Alpha (Frontier) stage, in very early Beta stage.

Letting the hacker walk away with millions at that point would have been silly. It was enough Ether to give the hacker the funds to DOS the system to death for years to come if he wanted to.

[+] animex|9 years ago|reply
I am bothered by it and steer clear of Ethereum, although the basic premise & ideas behind Ethereum interest me. There have been (4) hard forks so far. Of great concern was how the DAO fork/vote was conducted, this article provides a good summary:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-why-ethereums-har...

I wouldn't be surprised if ETC gains more popularity for adhering to the decentralized principles but I have no idea who is at the helm in terms of development for ETC.

ETH has seen a tripling in their value in the last few months. Definitely, the platform is a serious one, with serious goals and isn't a "shitcoin" (1000+ coins that fork bitcoin and pump and dump). They have buy-in from some major/bluechip players in the tech industry.The creator of ETH has stressed that ETH is a new technological experiment and volatility is part of the norm. So don't throw your life savings into it.

[+] jesusthatsgreat|9 years ago|reply
Because most people aren't lawyers whose job it is to defend bad actors and deflect blame on to good actors for enabling the bad actor to carry out their bad act in the first place.

If you're arguing there should have been no hard fork, then you're defending a person whom you know is guilty of an $80m robbery.

You can claim that technically it wasn't robbery, and they just found the money unattended while searching for unattended money in a bank, but any reasonable person would interpret that as theft.

Meanwhile, as you're fixated on how wrong Ethereum was to protect itself from a significant % of ETH falling in to the hands of a bad actor, there's a much larger issue in the cryptocurrency world right now which is mining centralisation in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular. It was viewed as merely theoretical once upon a time but now it's very much an issue and crippling the use of Bitcoin as a currency and as a project. Status.im is just one example of that. It could have been built using Bitcoin but it's using Ethereum because it's the more progressive platform / currency / blockchain / ecosystem.

[+] lifty|9 years ago|reply
An interesting project that tries to tackle governance and the formal verification aspect of smart contracts is Tezos (https://tezos.com). I find their approach very appealing and I think it has the potential to grow big, while retaining a solid foundation. It's worth reading their position and white papers.
[+] kkapelon|9 years ago|reply
Worst name ever. It will be very hard for people to search about this (not to mention the SEO problems)
[+] ksahin|9 years ago|reply
Amazing project, and great landing page btw. It seems the Ethereum ecosystem is becomming more and more mature, that's great !
[+] bshimmin|9 years ago|reply
I actually thought this was a Stripe product when I first saw the landing page - and I mean that as a compliment, because Stripe's web pages are always beautiful. (My only slight criticism of this one is that the bits which load in progressively as you scroll down have slightly too much of a delay.)
[+] mmjaa|9 years ago|reply
This looks great, but the only thing stopping me from integrating something like this into my apps is the fact that there isn't any native (Objective-C) client/library support, so far.

Its one thing to have a prototype built with JS. Its another thing entirely to integrate into apps which use native technologies.

[+] Ethcoin|9 years ago|reply
Whenever there is an article on crypto currencies, I see a subset of accounts come out of the woodwork to praise them.

Whether you've invested in Ethereum should be mentioned.

[+] marclave|9 years ago|reply
Great idea, and the landing page is incredibly beautiful. Well done.
[+] k0mplex|9 years ago|reply
But what's it for?
[+] carlbennetts|9 years ago|reply
Status is decentralized messaging platform to access the Ethereum Network (Web 3.0). Essentially we're building a network that's completely operated by it's own users, and runs entirely on peer-to-peer technologies.

Users can send encrypted messages, payments, and can interact and chat with decentralized applications. What's exciting about Ethereum is it removes the need not only for centralized servers, but also for intermediaries that were traditionally required in order to partake in trade or legal agreements. A good place to start if you'd like to learn more: http://www.ethdocs.org/en/latest/introduction/what-is-ethere...

[+] gorkemyurt|9 years ago|reply
Is the intention here to run mini react-native apps (Dapps?) within a bigger app (status app itself)?
[+] floflo79|9 years ago|reply
So awesome to see these dapps get to the next level!
[+] woodandsteel|9 years ago|reply
People have been using daps for a while now. Could someone explain what this allows you to do that you couldn't do before?
[+] coolspot|9 years ago|reply
If Apple would allow this in AppStore, it would be uuuge.
[+] neilalexander|9 years ago|reply
Near enough this exact idea is in the App Store in the form of another app called "Token".
[+] ptrinh|9 years ago|reply
Nice one from Singapore ;-)