[pietjepuk88]

I guess I shouldn't have put the "human" in parentheses. I did give an example of how the EF is spending their money on development of the ecosystem though, hoping that'd make it clear what I meant. I even chose a grant to a wallet as the example.

I personally prefer the role of the EF as a facilitator more than monolithic employer. And they can (and do) do facilitate in more ways than just handing out grants. It's just they experience has shown that helping out this way for wallet development (or even more generically software development) works better.

To add, they did start out providing the software as you say. After a certain point though, their efforts were outpaced by community effort or business opportunities arising in the Ethereum ecosystem. At this point it took a while for them to figure out what new role to take on with their ("our") funds, eventually settling on what they're doing now.

[eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7]

Thanks for your further reply! :)

> It's just they experience has shown that helping out this way for wallet development (or even more generically software development) works better.

Does it really work better from the perspective of a user though?

Because as a user I am now sitting in front of 24 websites which look equally "meh" in terms of trustworthiness (fancy design and huge claims), each of them trying to get me to hand out money to their software (that's what a wallet is about!), and almost all of them seemingly being for-profit companies which avoid listing their address.

A single 1 well-known website (EDIT: I meant wallet, not website) of a non-profit would "work better" for me as a user in terms of trusting my choice to keep my money safe. (If I had any, not buying ETH in this situation :)

> To add, they did start out providing the software as you say. After a certain point though, their efforts were outpaced by community effort or business opportunities arising in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Do you notice that you're actually arguing in favor of my point? :)

You say that their efforts were "outpaced", i.e. they failed. That's not a good thing to yield for $ 18 M :(

[literallycancer]

How does being a non-profit make their product more secure?

[pietjepuk88]

(I have no clue how to reply when the depth is reached)

> Because as a user I am now sitting in front of 24 websites which look equally "meh" in terms of trustworthiness (fancy design and huge claims), each of them trying to get me to hand out money to their software (that's what a wallet is about!), and almost all of them seemingly being for-profit companies which avoid listing their address.

Yes, I guess that's definitely a disadvantage of the ecosystem growing so much. It's great that that happened, but it also means that the EF does not control everything anymore. They cannot advertise just one solution with so many out there, lest they rub someone the wrong way. But they also can't say nothing either. And then it just becomes very confusing with this information overload for beginners (though I think "list of 24 websites" is a bit of an exaggeration; it's not _that_ bad imo [0])

I don't think this is entirely new in the world of software though. Generally you then get to things like looking for advice on forums or word-of-mouth, and then there's a guy like me saying "if you're a beginner only wanting to make transactions on Ethereum, get a Ledger Nano X hardware wallet and use their Ledger Live application". And "if you then want to move on interacting with dApps, use Metamask and connect it to your Nano X".

> A single 1 well-known website of a non-profit would "work better" for me as a user in terms of trusting my choice to keep my money safe. (If I had any, not buying ETH in this situation :)

Well, you would definitely know cryptocurrency is a bit different than a website securing your funds. Someone needs to hold onto the private keys. If you're looking for something similar to a bank, then get something similar to a bank (Coinbase?). But this difference (custodial services, private keys, hardware wallet) definitely adds to the barrier one needs to overcome to get started. I would also argue that "1 well-known website" (or 1 major client implementation that then becomes the defacto standard) does not quite fit into the whole "decentralization" aspect of cryptocurrencies, but not everyone cares as much about that.

> Do you notice that you're actually arguing in favor of my point? :)

You could look at it that way I guess ;) Progress is a function of money, and the EF has more to attend to than just software/wallet development. They could certainly blow through all their ("our") money in a year building a super fancy wallet. Or, as has happened, spend a little to jump start the ecosystem, and then comes along not one but multiple better wallets _for free_! None of "your" money was spent on developing these. Seems like a good deal to me, as now "your" money can be spent jump starting other awesome things that no one is paying much attention to yet.

[0] https://ethereum.org/en/wallets/