[joosters]

Is there any evidence that it actually does what it promised? There's a online blockchain to follow, and we can see that digital currency is changing hands, but that's like every other altcoin out there. The selling point of Ethereum seemed to be its "digital contracts" but has anyone made any significant contracts yet?

The other day, there was a post on HN about a 'simple' example Ethereum contract, but it turned out to rely on lots of validators and oracles that 'would exist in the future'.

So, it's not clear to me that they've delivered on their grandiose promises yet.

[13]

That's been fairly clear from the start. Almost anything actually useful needs an oracle, and then you get back to the problem of wait, didn't Bitcoin already solve this problem half a decade ago? Once you get past the marketing you've got a rather faulty and expensive clone of Bitcoin with a fairly sketchy history.