>Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free
Then use a cryptocurrency that has 0 (or very tiny) transaction fees?
>in case this e-book author has hidden a recursion bug in their version to drain your ethereum wallet of all your life savings
An ethereum smart contract can't take ethereum from anyone. It can only take what you've sent it. Also I'm not sure why the author didn't add in that you still have to trust the author to serve you the ebook. The smart contract would only give you an NFT that the site would check.
>yet is your Afghan villager going to download the blockchain from a broadcast node and decrypt the Merkle root from his Linux command line to independently verify that his vote has been counted? Or will he rely on the mobile app of a trusted third party — like the nonprofit or open-source consortium administering the election or providing the software?
What's the problem of making it convenient?