You don't need to register with the various providers or set up any plugins. You set things up once and then you're done. See Dick's comment about the reg bit at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33180661
Not at all. I do not believe that smart contracts are a feature. With smart contracts, there's a shift to mostly untested buggy contracts written on buggy and wasteful execution systems (e.g., Ethereum or some other crypto-chain). It's also completely unclear whether "smart" contracts would be considered enforceable in many or most jurisdictions.
There's well-documented failures of so-called "smart" contracts, and IMO building something like this on top of one is a recipe for disaster, just like the rest of the crypto-blockchain ecosystem.
Agree that there have been many failures in the smart contract market.
In contrast to many crypto projects, we are only using smart contracts for financing Hellō so that we can separate the return on investment from the cooperative governance. This removes one of the common failure modes of governance gone awry.
There is significant innovation in the crypto ecosystem and while there are failures (as there will be with any novel technology) there are also successes. As we don’t need to issue any smart contracts in the immediate future, we will be able to build upon the successes.
There's well-documented failures of so-called "smart" contracts, and IMO building something like this on top of one is a recipe for disaster, just like the rest of the crypto-blockchain ecosystem.