[you: unboxes package. What looks like a grey box with a few ports is pulled out of the box. You set it down on your table and pull out a small booklet on that rests beneath the items…]
[you read]
welcome to the mist
your personal rollup for ethereum
version: 0.42 w/ holoscreen and ledger card
[opens booklet]
Ethereum is an operating system, an internet provider, a power grid, a data center, a network, and a community. This is your access point.
Ethereum enables you to form and connect other to individuals for sharing information, bandwidth, power, or digital assets, all for organizing and incentivizing real world interactions.
The Ethereum network is enabled by you. Your participation with this device both helps to secure and to form the concentric trust circles that your network will rely on.
This is a node. The collective nodes you trust are your digital world. No two worlds are the same and it is your journey to create the digital world which you thrive in and compliments your physical world.
Everything you do and everyone you interact with is verified and it’s all tied back into the community you’re actually a part of. It is both trustless and built by you deciding who and what to trust.
This is your network.
Welcome on-chain.
[flips page]
using the system
Ethereum via Mist is crazy easy. Place your device in the vicinity of your power source and press the Ethereum logo.
The holoscreen will prompt you for an account or allow you to create one. You can later create multiple different accounts if you want to keep your identity and reputation siloed to different contexts.
Adding peers
You will by default join the global Ethereum settlement layer. This will take several minutes to sync and will begin while you make your account.
As you start to interact with others in various communities you will begin to form more local circles of trust. Whether this is spending money in your town’s shops, participating in online discussions, or uploading information to storage, every piece of data is shared with necessary parties and validated at the level needed for verified and trustless interactions.
*Note advanced users can manually add peers or trusted entities for faster syncing and data sharing by clicking the “manually add peers” button while syncing.
[flips page]
Applications
All applications are downloaded from your peers and run locally. You control what information you share and how you interact with the world. Ethereum is just the final global settlement layer that enables you to verify what happened and when on your machine while interacting with others.
The system comes preloaded with several applications:
- Chat – Voice or Video
- Messaging – long or short form communication
- Picture Gallery – A repository of videos and pictures
- Communities – digital forums for your connections
- Maps – crowd sourced maps, updated by you
- Information – an encyclopedia created by those around you
- Browser – application store
Any other application from the store can be downloaded and run on your terms. Be careful to make sure that applications fit your security standards and values when operating.
[flips page]
Your wallet
[pulls out a physical card, what looks like a credit card but with a singular diamond logo]
Digital assets are stored cryptographically on your system via your account (created when you turned the machine on). These assets can be sent using the built in wallet in this system or via the asset card given.
The card is accepted everywhere. In the background, any digital asset you have is automatically converted into the local currency of the vendors choice through digital asset markets run by validators of the system itself.
Funding your wallet
Ethereum is a community network. Almost all local level networks will ensure that you can participate in them honestly and for larger global applications, you can fund these verifications yourself, but can usually earn rewards by participating in surveys for research, sending power back to the grid from your home, updating trail maps for crowd sourced maps, or countless other activities. But to be honest, just running a validator in the background should be plenty for most users(this system has a small amount preloaded for you to stake).
Building your portfolio
Although your welcome too, you should be wary holding traditional financial assets in your wallet. In addition to being controlled outside of the network (subject to capture), they tend to promote unwanted interest in the network. Investments in Ethereum are by what you support. Find a cause and your money will remain stable against a basket of global goods, but by just holding specific causes, you can support them and show your support at various levels of your network.
Your validator
As you run the Ethereum network, you have the option (enabled by default) to secure the network. When you do so, you stake a small amount of ETH and then your Mist validator (depending on the amount staked) will take turns with others in the network in validating the various networks you are a part of.
Technical notes
What this means is that you will store encrypted packets of data and verify that updates follow certain rules. You don’t know what’s in the packets or where they ultimately came from, but they are relayed to you by your network. The more work your machine does the more you will earn.
You can opt out of this too. By default, you will automatically secure your own network as well as close networks too you (think your local friend groups or small causes). As the networks grow larger, they are parsed and each individual owns less and less of the whole (unless they opt into it). Everything you do and others do (in a public fashion) are cryptographically verifiable.
[flips page]
Your handheld
Ethereum can be booted as the operating system on your handheld device as well. If you use the same key, any device will be automatically synced with your Mist.
Troubleshooting
For any help, please join our distributed server here. Other users are always ready to support newcomers.
[puts book down]
[You plug the machine into your power source and continue the journey of connecting to and sharing with others.]