When I first wrote about Status in mid-2017, it had just completed a $100 million ICO. At the time I described it as “a kind of next-generation Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.” But in reality, there was no way to tell for sure since there was no actual product.
Since the ICO, Status has obviously spent time refining its marketing message. The project is now described as “a hybrid browser and messenger.” Its core features are browsing, chatting and making payments on “the decentralized web.” Okay, so does it have a product now, so that we can see what this functionality looks and feels like? Yes and no…
Status has not yet released an end user product. However if you’re an Android user, you can test the latest build by installing a “nightly.” iOS users can apply to get an alpha version too. There’s no desktop product yet, although Status has “a dedicated team working on desktop integration.”
The user guide shows how to start chatting with other people and sending an Ether payment. The latter is similar to the functionality of a digital wallet.
But the main selling point of Status, the reason why it earned $100m in its ICO, is the “Discover” functionality. This is the browsing part, which allows you to find and interact with DApps (decentralized apps) in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The user guide describes the Discover section as “the gateway through which you can find other contacts and contracts on a decentralized network that are relevant and interesting to you.”
Basically, you can interact with DApps in much the same way as you interact with other people. The guide states that “you can open a chat with [a DApp], which will direct you to an in-app browser that displays whatever is appropriate for that app.”
Except that sometimes a browser won’t open. In which case, “the DApp has been built into a chatbot and should provide you with a bunch of options for interacting with it in the form of ‘/suggestions’ above the keyboard input.”
The UI is a little unclear here, but I get the premise: you can find and interact with DApps from within the Status app – using either a browser or chat interface.
Based on the user guide and screenshots, it seems like the company is still a ways off a version 1 release for Status. A blog post regarding the latest release notes that “we’ve reworked the entire structure of the app with feedback from our Design and UX research teams.” If its still rejigging the underlying structure of the app, clearly there’s a long way to go before go-live.
Part of the reason for the current immaturity of the product is likely also the status (pardon the pun) of other Ethereum apps. For example, Augur is included in the above screenshot – but as I noted in an early Blocksplain post, Augur is far from being a released, live product either.
That said, the developer activity around Status seems high. CoinGecko, a market tracker similar to CoinMarketCap, gives Status an 87% rating for developer activity. That ranks Status 7th equal among all cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin is #1 with 98%, and Ethereum #2 with 94%).
However, Status ranks much lower for community activity: just 46% in CoinGecko. This ranking is based on activity on social media and discussion boards. NEO, for example, has a 69% community ranking on CoinGecko – a figure no doubt helped by its recent meetup tour of Europe and a DevCon in the US.
I checked the Status community on Reddit and saw little in the way of interaction. For example the latest weekly discussion thread has just two comments, one of them an early investor questioning activity on the project:
I have been holding on to some Status for quite a while and just out of raw curiosity was wondering if it is still an active project? I see little news and since I bought way high the day of the Bitfinex listing I have been watching a more or less steady decline in value. Will there be any encouriging news coming out soon for those of us that have invested?
So Status should consider doing more outreach to non-developer communities, especially for people who bought into their ICO.
That’s especially important when you consider the high market cap for this project. CoinMarketCap puts that at $550 million, which is very high based on Status’ current, far from finished, alpha product. Of course, an overly high market cap is the norm currently in the cryptocurrency industry. That doesn’t make it right though.
In summary then, while there is plenty of development work going into the product, Status appears very far from being user friendly to non-developers. A lot depends on the Ethereum DApp ecosystem maturing too, which is also no sure thing.
So overall, I have to conclude it’s still too early to tell if Status will be a viable product going forward. However the developers are clearly working hard, so I wish them luck and I’ll be keeping an eye on progress over 2018.