[aaron-lebo]

Is Ether not in short supply around there?

Serious question - is it easier or more likely to fix government issues which cause that lack of cash, or is it easier to fix those issues in order to get the technical infrastructure necessary to transplant technology not even widely used in the US?

The notion that a poor villager would be reliant on the Ethereum network for anything is slightly terrifying. Where do they go if they're wronged, there's a bug, or the people running the network decide upon a hard fork?

Is that a reliable money supply?

[zimzim]

they stated their aim is to help 2B people in develop countries. it is very hard to fix the government. there are networks here, poor villagers how use money have a phone, I think its better to by-pass the government. relying on private company is terrifying as relying on third world government. decentralized solution would be the best. also E-money is used here already, trough the cellular company but they have a monopoly backed by the government so its just another way of stealing from the people.

[aaron-lebo]

Thanks for the response. Hopefully Zimbabwe has a good future ahead.

[dzonga]

fellow limbo, what zim needs is a pure decentralized currency that zanu can't control e.g a time based one

[zeveb]

It's probably more reliable than Robert Mugabe's government has been. A good, stable Western government might be preferable to Internet anarchy (although not always: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisonsins-shame...), but they don't have a good, stable Western government: they have a deeply corrupt, horrifically incompetent kleptocracy.

[irq-1]

Interesting that having a way to fix problems - someone you can call for help - always seems to be left unsolved with digital currency.

> What happens if I lose my phone? Can I recover my funds?

> Our launch today only uses Ethereum testnet coins (not real money) in case this happens. However, you can recover access to your wallet by storing a backup phrase, or by choosing trusted friends (coming soon).

Also, the stated aim of helping the poorest sounds noble, but experience with charity is clear: poor people want solutions used by wealth countries, not a solution designed to be used by them. Banks and Courts can't be what the first world uses to fix problems, while we make a different system for the poor.

https://www.ted.com/talks/timothy_prestero_design_for_people...

[eeZah7Ux]

Smartphone and cells are happening anyways given the huge demand.

Creating a stable and trustworthy government and a banking system is hugely difficult compared with developing any cryptocurrency.

[menacingly]

Not sure why this is downvoted, looks like a decent question asked in good faith

[splintercell]

It's because he wrote this:

> or the people running the network decide upon a hard fork?

which screams malice aforethought to people. The idea is that Ethereum had a hard fork which has divided people across two sides. To average people, you can get them to take any side depending upon how you compose the questions. You ask a non-techie:

1. What would you think if a company like Venmo decides to revert donations you received to pay for your daughter's cancer cure?

2. What would you think if the network of services you were using had a major theft, and the network took measures to thwart that theft by denying the thief access to the funds?

Please don't argue on which of the questions is more dishonest. The point here is, if you ask the first question, majority of the people will agree with the anti-hard fork side, and if you ask the second question then majority of the people will side with the pro-hard fork side.

Grandparent comment, writing what he wrote in passing is like reading a 'seemingly' unbiased article about US election, with a passing line about "but would people be ok with having a president who deleted confidential emails, only time will tell".

This is essentially what the GP comment did.

[aaron-lebo]

I actually thought twice about writing that because it does seem a little unfair. The Eth guys didn't want to do that hard fork and I'm sure they have no intentions of ever having one again.

But that was the case before the first fork. There was no indication that was going to happen then, either. so if it's five years from now, more people are relying on Ethereum and something we can't anticipate requires (truly or not it doesn't matter) another hard fork? Can you convince users that won't happen under any circumstances? We have a precedent.

Seems perfectly fair and not an invalid question if we are talking about people in the real world using Ethereum and not just a bunch of early adopters. Is it not?

[splintercell]

> Can you convince users that won't happen under any circumstances? We have a precedent.

I have seen this common fallacy which exists across all areas (Especially around security), but the best example of this was when Apple revealed that it received orders from FBI to help them unlock a terrorist's iPhone.

Majority of the people were making arguments such as "But what is it to stop FBI from using this special software to crack other people's iPhones", which misses the point that if FBI can force Apple to issue a custom ROM which allows them to crack into a phone, then the security exploit already exists, it doesn't start to exist when Apple signs such a ROM.

Same goes here, if hard forking to alter the ledger is 'breaking immutability' then all blockchains are not immutable, they don't start becoming immutable the moment they fork the blockchain.

Take it another way, if you could go back in time and convince Ethereum community to not hard fork, is Ethereum blockchain more immutable in that timeline? In fact, you don't have to go that far, currently there exists a fork of Ethereum blockchain which didn't decide to go with the hard fork, is Ethereum Classic more immutable than Ethereum main chain?

The fact is the DAO hardfork was made possible because of one reason:

The DAO locked the funds of the hacker into a smart contract for 30 days. If the hacker got spending access to his Ethers, then this hard fork would not have been possible because it would mean reverting very legitimate transactions where people have transacted goods/services for Ether (not to mention, community would not have gone for the hard fork if that were the case).

> Seems perfectly fair and not an invalid question if we are talking about people in the real world using Ethereum and not just a bunch of early adopters. Is it not?

People in real world, if they fully understand the concept of Hard fork, are even more pro-hard fork than majority of Ethereum users. Remember, the non-blockchain world is as far from immutability as possible. Nearly all credit card companies offer reversible transactions, nearly all ecommerce sites offer you ability to get refunded if something goes wrong.

A bunch of early adopters are the only one who cry 'immutability'. We come from the software world, so we know why immutability is a desirable thing, but to an average person mutability or immutability is a meaningless distinction. They all expect mutability to the default.

[profalseidol]

What's more scary is them getting branded as "terrorists".