Other popular smart contracts right now: an ETH-backed token that uses a derivative to maintain a fairly stable value, the Uniswap decentralized exchange, and games with non-fungible tokens for player assets.

“popular”

At its peak the stablecoin contract held $2 billion, I'd say that's reasonably popular.

None of this stuff is ready for the mass market because scaling is so limited, but that's on track to get about 1000X better over the next two years.

Ethereum is currently being used for decentralized finance. It's not vaporware at all: https://defipulse.com/

This market is not validated by anything close to mainstream.

I will try to not laugh at this the next time I pay escrow and other closing fees. We are in Web 1.0 in terms of the technological application of programmable consensus.

One, don’t mock people on HN. Two, you’re going to need to cite real examples to support your claim, not just spout a bunch of buzzwords.

Quick search of “ethereum escrow” returns no real implementations that avoid fees or human intermediaries. Every single blog post I’ve read that tries to sketch an alternative is incredibly poorly thought through and still vulnerable to fraud. That is why they are just blog posts and not real, not because it’s “still early days.” I think it’s fair to say trustless escrow is vaporware.

I'm not going to argue against ignorance. One can simply google the technology and see for themselves instead of drinking the Kool-aid from others. There's a reason for the large push against crypto; an agenda.

Programmable consensus and smart contracts are easy to learn concepts.

https://medium.com/coinmonks/escrow-service-as-a-smart-contr...

*Also one should know it is offensive to call another's work vaporware. Especially, when one is relying on anecdotes. Next I'm going to be told IBM and Google are wasting their time and shareholder money on blockchain.

That's for posting an actual citation. The author of that blog post explicitly states in a follow up comment: "I totally agree that it makes no business sense" and that his objective is merely "to explain how a smart contract implements the terms of a contract."

So yes, fair to say it's vapor i.e. not a real thing. That may be harsh but it is a fair and supported criticism, whereas your prior comment merely engaged in unsupported mockery.

A lot of the building blocks for mainstream use don't exist, but could conceivably emerge in time given Ethereum is Turing Complete.

There are projects with a very high potential to provide those building blocks in development right now, like Matter Labs' use of zero-knowledge proofs to scale Ethereum:

https://matterlabs.dev/

But yea it's all very speculative right now. I speculate it will work, but it'll depend on what the various players in the industy actually accomplish.