Well, if you consider "showing the world how buggy code can lead to financial disaster" a meaningful activity, then Ethereum is quickly becoming one of our proudest achievement.

too me everyday ethereum/bitcoin don't go to 0 that further proves the premise and makes the ecosystem stronger.

I'm thinking that's what the Pets.com investors thought, too.

or google that's the risks of investing. I wouldn't sink my retirement in crypto.

Some recognized projects that didn't have an ICO:

https://etherdelta.github.io - decentralized exchange is getting decent volume. Ironically the hacker dumped the veri tokens there.

https://ethlance.com - freelancer market. Looks like a place where once can earn Ether for coding in Solidity and related gigs.

http://ens.domains - .eth domain registry. Highly successful, will be integrated into the upcoming 'mist browser' release, plus a few other places (wallets & exchanges) support it already. Over 133k names registered.

Probably more I've missed.

There are over 3,000,000 Namecoin domains registered[0], but nobody uses it. Not a worthwhile metric IMO.

[0]https://namecoin.webbtc.com/stats

Wow, amazing. That's a lot. Is there any reason or incentive why so many names despite not many use it?

Btw, full ENS stats here https://ens.codetract.io

Squatting and premptive defense against it, maybe.

Or simply curious people trying something new. I know I registered a name for fun, and there was quite a bit of curious interest in tech circles in my area (even outside of cryptoanarchists types).

But then, for the moment most people see ICANN regulation as okay. Maybe if that changes, a distributed alternative will get traction.

> Is anyone making money on Ethereum in ways that are unrelated to just currency appreciation/speculation?

Yeah, the hackers seems to be doing alright out of it.

They aren't hackers, they are scammers and crackers. Hackers are builders and creators, they persevere in the face of improper tools by being creative.

That ship sailed a long time ago. The commonly accepted definition is now the one you're contesting.

Both definitions are commonly accepted, for certain values of 'common'. The positive definition is limited to the tech industry, of course. I don't think that there is any appropriate situation to try to correct other people's usage, but I'm sympathetic to the idea that one should use the word properly on this site.

I think this is not the kind of answer you're expecting and will probably find this underwhelming and unimaginative, but etheroll (https://etheroll.com/) is an ethereum gambling website which I believe is profitable.

A very good question for which the answer was NO for a long time.

Prism is a live service using Ethereum smart contract(s).

It is from the Shapeshift people and is a kind of "digital asset portfolio". You can invest in many types of digital assets without having to hold them.

People are spending real money on this Ethereum smart contract.

https://blog.prism.exchange/blog/introducing-prism-the-world...

If I read that correctly, "digital assets" is just a fancy expression for "other cryptocurrencies". So that does come back to pure cryptocurrency speculation, except that it's across a range of them, not just Ethereum itself.

Man, this is JUST like the .com v1 bubble: "I'll buy your over-inflated N billion dollar company using the stock from my over-inflated M billion dollar company."

Technically Prism is a means of investing in cryptocurrency (which is primarily motivated by speculation in these cryptocurrencies), thus I think it still falls into the idea that most things are pretty incestuous still in this market.

I think one thing that plays against using these cryptocurrencies for other things besides speculation is that they are so speculative, huge ups and downs with lots of opportunities to win just trading them. Because of that they are being treated a lot like stocks (which often appreciates if you hold it) rather than currency (which is usually slowly depreciating, which encourages spending.) I think the incentives for these cryptocurrencies is sort of wrong, they are cryptostocks.

The 'killer app' for the time being are indeed ICOs. Unregulated, messy ICOs.

I do think it is too early to judge the cryptocurrency world or blockhain in general for not having 'killer apps'. Analogies to the early internet are no good either since there is no reason as to why this would behave like that. Time will tell. Can't deny it is an interesting space!

During the internet bubble fundamentals didn't matter because it was a new economy, valuations shot up, everyone was seemingly raising a lot of money to be the next best thing and then the music stopped. Reasoning of the form "this seems crazy but it must obey different fundamentals we don't understand so let the music keep on playing" should make us uncomfortable.

> Can't deny it is an interesting space!

I'd actually disagree exactly because of the lack of "killer apps". There are plenty more interesting things happening in technology when you consider no one really seems to know what to do with this. Right now blockchains sound like get-rich-quick catnip for geeks.

I kind of equate ethereum to HTTP or FTP. did anyone make money on those when they first came out? Also, if the decentralized "goal" is manifested the wealth wouldn't be concentrated. If you paid a transaction fee of .5% instead of 2%-3% you didn't make a lot of money but collectively the ecosystem would benefit immensely.

Somebody appears to be making a pretty penny stealing.

If you've received VC money, I suppose you're getting a salary - if you want to include that as making money.

Softbank has invested in various applications.