An Internet Revolution: What is Status?

The world’s first mobile and desktop client for the Ethereum network has been released. Status (SNT) is a brand-new way in which users can now interface Ethereum’s network of applications and smart contracts.

What is Status?

Status is an Ethereum-based, decentralised messaging app, crypto wallet, and web browser. It can be downloaded onto any mobile device and functions very much like an App Store.

Source: © Panya85 | Megapixl.com      

The Status platform allows users to access over two thousand DApps ( (decentralised applications). A decentralised application is a computer program that runs on a distributed system such as Ethereum.

Status also allows for users to send peer-to-peer encrypted messages. Furthermore, it allows users to utilise the platform for payments and smart contracts.

The native cryptocurrency of the Status network is the Status Network Token (SNT).

What does Status mean to the internet?

The whole decentralising movement aims to take power away from the traditional social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, which advertisers and shareholders run, and give power back to the user.

For example, in a user-run system, the users have control and ownership of their personal data. However, this is not the case with companies like Facebook. In the early 2010s, Facebook came under much scrutiny when it was discovered that the British firm, Cambridge Analytica, was collecting data belonging to its users. The data collected was predominantly used for advertising various political messages catered to users based upon their personal data.

Decentralised projects such as Ethereum and its desktop platform, Status, fix the problem of privacy related to personal data by having the users own all of their personal data. It really is an attempt at truly democratising the internet.

Status is an Ethereum-based crypto wallet (Source: © Semisatch | Megapixl.com)

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Who are the Status players?

Status was founded by software developers Jarrad Hope and Carl Bennets. The Status team comprises 70 full-time developers and operators located in Crypto Valley, Switzerland.

The team spends most of their time focusing on the development of DApps and standard day-to-day operations.

How is Status different?

In the traditional internet model, the user is seen as the product. As such, advertising pop-ups are abounding throughout the internet and have been since the beginning of its monetisation.

Status, on the other hand, doesn’t generate income from advertising.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Status is a free service. For users to utilise the decentralised applications, they have to pay the currency, SNT, with a provider.

Although Status isn’t free, it’s giving the user more choice and more agency over how they interface with the internet.

Power to the User

SNT tokens mean that anyone who has SNT tokens can be part of governing the platform. Therefore, the users of the network can offer solutions to problems and make decisions regarding software development.

However, there is a catch that may suggest that Status is not as decentralised as it appears. That catch is the more SNT a user has, the more agency they have regarding decisions made on the platform.

So How Decentralised is Status?

While having a decentralised network sounds great in theory, putting that theory into practice is a very different proposition.

Status seems to recognise that there needs to be some semblance of a hierarchy to establish order amongst a network. As such, they’ve created a feature called “The Web of Trust” in which holders of SNT pay for badges that indicate that user’s trustworthiness.

This raises questions surrounding the correlation of trustworthiness and the ability to pay for a badge which indicates a particular level of trustworthiness. The solution to that problem at this stage, at least on paper, seems to be: if a user has an economic stake in a token, they will therefore have the best interests of the community as a whole. Whether that philosophy will work remains to be seen.

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