JasoonS's comments

That's not true. For example: https://link.medium.com/cGM3v6dTC7

Also you can use tornado.cash for example over Tor. Or any dapp via something like metamask (or another wallet) over Tor.

Hey, I recommend sticking to bs-css (https://github.com/reasonml-labs/bs-css). Not because I don't think styled-ppx is super cool or amazing, but because it's so cutting edge your 99% chance going to run into an edge case that isn't well accounted for yet (I had a number of issues when I tried it). bs-css is battle tested today, so if you're goal is stability, I recommend it first.

Separate browsers too, for me it's just super unpractical to always have to open a new browser window just to open facebook, personal email, work slack etc.

Tree tabs then makes its super convenient to navigate between these worlds.

The main thing to keep in mind at this point in time is that these contracts have very little tolerance for inefficiency, since inefficiency in this case costs money. Even solidity is very inefficient. Sure it would be great to write contracts in Haskell or Coq but can you insure O(1) or at most O(n) run time with little to no constant overhead? For example LLL (Low-Level Lisp-Like Language) produces 70% more efficient code than solidity [1] and thus it is the chosen language for the ENS (Ethereum Name Service) registry smart contract (who wouldn't want to pay 70 less for interacting with a contract?). But no doubt, better languages will come with time :)

[1] https://media.consensys.net/an-introduction-to-lll-for-ether...

Another interesting use case is for supply chain management, since the history of a interactions relating product can be documented in a secure manner Eg. you can buy a nike shoe that you can cryptographically validate that it was signed off by Nike, who made it, when they made it, when it was shipped, and even how much each of these parties got paid for their service. (Take a listen here: https://media.consensys.net/state-change-44-shining-a-light-...)

Their main use case is maintaining critical/sensitive state information that you want to protect via rules of interaction between multiple parties (that don't trust each other) without the need for a trusted intermediary. The contract is tamper proof and only via correctly and cryptographically signing messages/transactions intended for the smart contract will the state of the smart contract change, but only according to the rules defined in the smart contract.

The (non-fintec) example I often hear about often is a voting system. (See: https://github.com/stonecoldpat/anonymousvoting , here zk-snarks algorithm is introduced to ensure privacy)

Essentially anything that requires co-ordination between parties that don't trust each other over a piece of data (a balance of money, the tally of a ballot) is a perfect use case for smart contracts. But since there is cost to running it on these secure networks it is important that they remain O(1) or at most O(n) time complexity, which for these kinds of applications is often totally enough. (eg. if (the message is signed by the 'owner') { send the funds } else { throw })

Here is one early stage project I've heard of using ethereum: https://akasha.world/

Exactly, that's why you probably shouldn't be throwing your money at any of them. That's not an indication of the future of the technology though. Only time will tell.

> currently no one does.

Clearly you haven't done enough research. Have you looked at the ethereum token (ERC20: https://theethereum.wiki/w/index.php/ERC20_Token_Standard) launch contracts? They raise large amounts of money (its actually scary!) and securely and transparently tokens are distributed to participants. These tokens can then represent anything (really anything) from stock (blockchain capital etc), to voting rights in the organisation (districtOx), to a utility token (golem, basic attention token) to allow use for what ever protocol is being developed.

There already are private secure voting systems being researched. Here for example: https://github.com/stonecoldpat/anonymousvoting ZK-snarks is used to ensure privacy.

You can see some of the other applications here: https://dapps.ethercasts.com/ (most of these are just fun ideas, but you don't have to look far to see the potential in them).

There is real utility to Ethereum, it is just very very young as a technology, and all the issues of scalability etc are a work in progress. But if you want to use the trust-less and secure computational power to execute your code (smart contract) you need to buy Ether first. Is that a Ponzi? I think you are unfairly grouping ethereum in the same category as a large number coins that very much are ponzis.

Honestly, the appeal to me of FFF (hands down my favourite programming youtube channel) is his quirky sense of humour. Each to his own. The more quirky someone is the more polarising to their fan-base they are, I suppose.