[m3ta]

The more confusing thing is what will happen when the userbase finds out Ethereum "smart contracts" aren't good for anything except online gambling which certainly will not be allowed on the TokenBrowser app. Also, I shook my head when I saw your screenshot, that is certainly not a good first impression.

[pipermerriam]

Isn't the history of technology riddled with inventions that "aren't good for anything except ..." which turned out to be good for lots of things.

From the top of my head the following examples come to mind.

1. Early criticism of the tablet was that nobody would use them because they didn't have a keyboard.

2. Early criticism of the internet was that nobody would ever purchase anything over the internet.

3. Early criticism of dropbox mentioned elsewhere in this thread, "they're just re-selling S3, why would anyone use that".

Disclaimer that I'm pretty deep in the Ethereum space so my perspective is anything but objective, but it is informed as I know the space quite well.

Smart contracts are capable of big transformative change to how we do a lot of things, but they are REALLY new and we're only just starting to learn how to use them and what we can use them for. Here are some examples.

1. Look at [ENS](http://ens.domains/) as an example of what DNS might look like if it weren't centralized.

2. Look at [simple Escrow examples](https://dappsforbeginners.wordpress.com/tutorials/two-party-...) for how smart contracts can remove middlemen from financial transactions.

None of these things are likely to blow up into massive mainstream adoption tomorrow but they are illustrative of what is possible and there are a lot of people working very hard to make these things ready for mainstream adoption.

[sanswork]

>how smart contracts can remove middlemen from financial transactions.

These sorts of things are trivially gamed and have been since they were first proposed in the bitcoin space. Besides that you don't even remove a middleman for this example since you still need the courier to act as the middleman.

[alvarosevilla95]

That's not true at all though. Smart Contracts are being used in a wide variety of great projects.

In my opinion what's really missing is a fiat currency token, that can be legally recognised as actual money for a lot of business to be able to go massive.

[m3ta]

> That's not true at all though. Smart Contracts are being used in a wide variety of great projects.

Do you have any examples of projects that would be truly different or impossible to implement without smart contracts?

[alvarosevilla95]

Well that depends in what's truly different for you. A quick example, because I'm on my phone, is [1], which is enabling donating to specific people around the world with total transparency through smart contracts

[1] http://www.giveth.io/

[m3ta]

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about. It is a nice idea. However there are no problems charities face that existing FIAT currencies or bitcoin or standard real-world contracts don't already solve. Unless there is a case to be made that censorship or centralization is a problem for contracts in the charity space, this app is a solution looking for a problem, in my opinion.

It is unclear how blockchain smart contracts contribute any value to the users in this case.

[sbierwagen]

There are a number of Islamic charities that have been prosecuted under suspicion of funding terrorism. Of course, as soon the government thinks Ethereum is being used to send money to ISIS, anyone associated with the project will be swiftly conveyed to Guantanamo Bay.

[smnplk]

Poor Vitalik, I don't want him to get waterboarded.