I just preordered the ethOS phone. Transparency: I'm a fan of the devs @markus @nc and @mme, but have no financial connection to ethOS.

Shipping your own mobile OS is crazy. Quixotic. The team is small and scrappy. So why do I think this project is important?

Dev at ethOS, a mobile OS that is crypto native- nf.td/markus, Technology brother

24 🇮🇹 | Core Dev at ethOS, a mobile OS with native Ethereum support.

Dev at ethOS, a mobile OS with native Ethereum support

I just preordered the ethOS phone. Transparency: I'm a fan of the devs @markus @nc and @mme, but have no financial connection to ethOS.

Shipping your own mobile OS is crazy. Quixotic. The team is small and scrappy. So why do I think this project is important?

https://mint.ethosmobile.org/

I work for Ethereum at the Ethereum Foundation.

Real World Ethereum 🌎 
building /daimo ✳️ 

TLDR I think app distribution is a key problem for crypto, and ethOS is an exciting experiment toward fixing it.

Ethereum has some amazing properties. Credible neutrality. "Hardness", to use @js framing. But users don't use protocols, they use apps, & our current channels for shipping an app undermine those qualities.

Or we can ship on mobile. Equally bad. iPhones are not general-purpose computers, they are curated products that run whatever Apple presently allows. Android is a bit better: you can install APKs, but via a scary-looking side hatch so that distribution in practice still requires Google's permission.

🥒 So we are in a pickle 🥒 

Cryptography is fundamentally about trusting math. You want to run the right code, the same code that others are running & that's had professional eyes on it. Web gives you no guarantees there.

Cryptocurrency is fundamentally about autonomy: your keys, your coins. Here, mobile gives you no guarantees. Company-curated app stores may allow a particular dapp today and change their mind tomorrow.

Neither web nor App Store/Play Store can deliver a window into Ethereum without serious compromise.

The situation is much better on desktop and server.

Companies that tried to walled-garden those platforms so far have failed; nor do personal computers bake in a trusted-server model. Ever since Satoshi in 2009, most serious trust-minimized crypto software runs on PC.

🚨 This is a long-term risk for crypto, for our whole project. 🚨

The declining platform (desktop apps) is most conducive to our values, while the now-dominant platforms (mobile and web) involve key compromises.

I see ethOS as a prototyping R&D lab for addressing that risk. How does it do that?

ethOS integrates a light client, giving it a neutral root of trust. One day I'll be able to install Warpcast from app.warpcast.eth

- I know I'm running the same code as everyone else
- Public, transparent release history
- With deterministic builds, the community knows each release matches exactly what's in Github

- Plus there is structurally no way to serve app A in country A, app B (or nothing at all) in country B

Not every app needs all that. Many--Uber, for example--inherently involve trusting a specific organization anyway. But for the kinds of app the cypherpunk / crypto / Ethereum community cares about, it's essential.

To conclude, "progress depends on the unreasonable man."

1992 Torvalds looked nuts trying to take on Unix by himself. RMS had Flat Earther vibes railing on, disheveled, about the importance of user-controlled software. But both bent the arc of technology for the better.

Now it is @markus and co's turn to look crazy

What do we do today? Mostly, we ship dapps as web apps. Fundamentally a trusted-server model: a modern browser ensures that you're communicating privately with the right host. You trust the host for everything else, including serving you the correct code, every time you use the app.