Ethereum & Parity: Pros & Cons for a Consumer

I’ve been able to get by for a few years with some basic tools to keep my coins safe. I’ve tried a number of different technologies, experimenting with each one to see what would be the best for my own use case.

I thought it was time to give Parity a shot. I wanted to see what it could do.

Note: I’m evaluating this from a purely consumer perspective. I’m an Engineer that owns a Digital Marketing company and I have to explain “complex” tech issues to clients on a daily basis.

What is Parity?

Parity is the main client (application) for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. It has a whole host of features such as:

1. Accounts (any multiple of wallets and addresses you may hold)
2. Addressbook (saved network addresses you might send/receive ETH from)
3. Applications (Decentralized Applications (DApps) that you can interact with)
4. Contracts (hidden by default, it allows you to interact with smart contracts; this is how people participate in ICOs and multi-sig transactions.)
5. and Signer (allows you to interact and transact with Decentralized APPs (DApps) — it gives you control over transaction requests from the DApps)

These are just the surface level applications of Parity. Within each of those main tabs (shown abovc) are a number of additional features. The rabbit hole gets much deeper.

How do I download it? How does it run?

I’m on a Windows 10 machine currently. Ethereum has a Github account with all of the releases here: https://github.com/paritytech/parity/releases.

You simply go there and find the release that matches your operating system, download and install.

On Windows (a single 32/64 bit version) it will download an application that hosts a local server on your computer. The client will actually open in your default browser window so you can interact with it.

Pros

Let me begin by stating that this is a great technology for an Engineer or advanced trader. It gives you full control over almost every interaction that you would need to complete on the Blockchain.

Here are a few items I found helpful:

1. You can enable browser notifications for when you receive tokens. This sounds trivial but these are helpful when I’m sending coins to my Parity wallet. It’s always nerve-racking when you’re sending a few thousand dollars and hoping that you didn’t mistype an address.
2. Creating a new account can be completed via a well-explained user interface (UI). There is some room for improvement (dumbing down) the explanations but generally this is very easy to get going.
3. Basic tools to force a strong password are put into place. (Note: It should probably confirm the usage of a weak password. It’s annoying but gives reason for second thought).
4. The user is forced to type “I have written down the phrase” for recovering their account and to provide the recovery phrase on the final step. This is a great security measure. You can also print it directly from the UI. Sweet.
5. In order to send funds or to participate in an ICO contract, you have to confirm your password. This is a basic protection that is absolutely needed for a system like this.
6. All of the tools an advanced user (Engineer or advanced trader) would need are there.

Cons

I’m evaluating this from a purely consumer perspective. I’m an Engineer that owns a Digital Marketing company and I have to explain “complex” tech issues to clients on a daily basis.

I’m looking at this as if I would have to explain it to a new client who is only mildly familiar with technology.

So here goes:

1. Parity starts at login. Now this wouldn’t be a bad default setting if you didn’t need to sync the entire blockchain which subsequently kills your internet connection and locks up your computer (RAM usage goes through the roof when it’s syncing).
2. Security notice to upgrade wasn’t easy to find. It was on the “Home” tab in a box I wouldn’t have seen if I wasn’t looking closely. When you open Parity, it’s a normal reaction to skip the “promos” and go straight for the “meat” of the application — your account(s). This would be bad for a normal consumer. On Windows they literally have to force users to upgrade their software. (Note: I realize Parity is a “work in progress” and this is new technology).
3. While the UI feels intuitive, there is still a lot of terminology that a normal person would have trouble with. Geth, keystore, JSON, multi-sig can be overwhelming unless you really know your stuff.
4. Parity is associated with a major hack. The hacker made away with $31 million that took advantage of the default multi-signature code that Parity deploys. Granted: this has been dealt with since, but I have a strong sense that most people will ignore the technical details of the hack and simply associate Parity with hack (and a $31 million loss).
5. The process to participate in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is incredibly arduous. There are YouTube videos out there explaining what to do but you really have to do your research in order to get this working.
6. The Parity node may lose connection. When this happens — you cannot navigate to any other options as a modal box appears. Frustrating, especially when your internet connection is still working fine.
7. If someone has access to your computer, they control your node. There is no authentication needed to run the actual application. You do, however, have to enter in a password to transact but if you use the same one that’s stored in your browser it’s a moot point.
8. The differentiation between Accounts & Addressbook isn’t immediately clear. This may sound a bit nitpicky, but it can be slightly confusing since accounts and addresses are interchangeable terminology.

Key Takeaways

Here are a few of the key takeaways from my first two weeks using Parity:

1. This is a great tool for Engineers and advanced traders. It unlocks all of the functionality you would need. However, although it mentions end-users in the application— Parity is not ready for normal end-users. In all fairness: this is a hurdle a lot of wallet applications have.
2. We still have a long ways to go before Parity will see a more mainstream adoption.
3. Parity, although associated with a major hack (again: the client itself wasn’t hacked), deploys good security measures to protect the accounts. But — I would love to see additional protection measures on the client side (a password, authenticator integration or a pin code) in order to access the application itself. If someone were to take their computer in to get it fixed, this is wide open.