[rdl]

Smart contract blockchain with 1) on-chain governance and 2) a formally-verifiable language for writing the smart contracts.

People are excited about the launch both because of what it is, and because it already had a lot of people contribute to a fundraiser a year ago.

[rspeer]

On-chain governance? It would be pretty entertaining to see if they actually stick to that, and if whoever wins the high-stakes game of Nomic they've created gets to win it for keeps, unlike The DAO.

Of course precedent says they'll just hard fork it the moment the "governance" does something the central developers don't want.

[rdl]

Forking becomes less likely/more costly as a system is widely adopted, and as it is widely decentralized. I agree with you on historical precedent but have more faith in this for a variety of technical and structural reasons. Disclaimer that I’ve known Arthur and Kathleen for a long time (pre-Tezos) and have helped out a little with some infrastructure/security a few times with the project, but that also means I have seen how the sausage is made.

My “article of faith” is that one time someone will get this sufficiently right to facilitate a lot of awesome stuff. Based on what I’ve seen, I think Tezos has a good chance of being “it”. People should definitely do their own research, and it isn’t an all-or-nothing trust thing; trust can be built in a network over time and through use.