Web site is totally useless.

Testnet instructions are here: http://doc.tzalpha.net/introduction/alphanet.html

Best I can tell: smart contracts like Ethereum, except the protocol has means for amending the protocol itself? So, meta-Ethereum?

This article (Linda Xie) is pretty good: https://medium.com/@linda.xie/a-beginners-guide-to-tezos-c96...

Apparently they also already have proof of stake?

Thank god. Because the one thing Ethereum was missing was more complexity.

At least it uses OCAML and functional code instead of the EVM, for which even the Eth founders themselves can't write secure code.

And a much better language. Though it is hard to do worse than solidity. The consensus algorithm is pretty terrible though, but subject to amendment I suppose.

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.

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.

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.

It's a an ocaml-flavored coin promising to solve "governance" problems. It has naturally suffered a lot of governance drama related to colorful personalities involved.

Due to sudden KYC requirements there is already a fork called "Tezos libre"

Tezos Libre was announced long before the KYC requirement occured. It is a scam, based on an ethereum token. They have not even succeeded in finding the github "fork" button for Tezos yet. There is no there, there except a scammer trying to get paid.

It was only after the KYC announcement that TzLibre changed tack to claim it's purpose was anti KYC.

From the website:

> The Tezos Foundation’s primary focus is the promotion and development of the Tezos protocol and related technologies, as well as the promotion and support of applications using the Tezos protocol.

Should be clear now, right? ;)