1. There is a general widespread belief dapps ("distributed apps") are The Next Big Thing.  However, the only thing special about a "dapp" over a current "app" is use of a blockchain for information storage.   So the first requirement is to come up with a Great Idea that requires use of a blockchain.  Next, you have to come up with a programming language to write that dapp.  ETH uses Solidity.  This is an experimental new language that is very complex, has very few programmers that understand it, and writes buggy, unstable and even dangerous code that enabled the recent DAO hack.  Javascript has been around for decades, has tens of thousands of programmers that use it, and while buggy code in JS is still a possibility (OK, a certainty), at least the bugs are far less obscure than in Solidity.  Plus, JS is the "face of the internet" and so Lisk has a head-start in that sense to develop dapps that many people can use via familiar web-based interfaces.  ETH/Solidity has staked out the high-end financial/banking world with its high security requirements - and has shown by the recent DAO disaster they have a LONG way, years and years to go, before they get there.  Lisk/JS has staked out the lower-end consumer/individual world to develop useful tools for people.  THere's more opportunities and more programmers to develop them in the Lisk / JS world than there are in the ETH/Solidity world - and in the Lisk world, those opportunities are going to be realized faster and earlier.

2.  I think there's around 35M Lisk stored by owners over on Polo (30M cold wallet, 5M hot wallet, see: https://lisktools.io/accounts.php ) and at any given time 4M-5M of those Lisk are up for sale to individual buyers (see https://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_lsk ).  Note this means 60-65% of Lisk is being held as a long-term investment (by people like me) instead of being "dumped" for a quick ICO profit.  There looks like a lot of up and down motion in Lisk but if you construct a graph with the data it turns out Lisk price has been remarkably stable between 0.30-0.35 USD per Lisk and what is happening is that the Lisk price is tracking the ups and downs of Bitcoin price in a stable manner rather than flop all over the place or head down on a steady decline.  It is obvious (at least to me) some very heavy hitters believe in Lisk for the long-term and are working behind the scenes to support its price and buy more and more when Lisk is "cheap" relative to BTC.

I have a couple of questions regarding EXP:

Do I need to update my wallet for homestead?
What block # will homestead be active?

Thanks everyone.

I'm not sure what i need to do to run a wallet for Expanse .I'm running  windows 10 pro and able to mine using Ethminer-opencl-0.9.41 on supernova's pool .I just can't figure out how to set up and run the wallet I downloaded "Gexp.exe" not to sure what it is that i need to do from there. So for now iv been sending all of the my mined EXP to my wallet on Bettrex are there any good links how how to set it up

Thanks for your detailed response. It is reassuring to know you still have a reserve and it is being used wisely by the sound of it.
Looking forward to the staking development.

Back to the DAO and contracts over the 10M. If I have e.g. 100 or 1k or 10k EXP, from the whitepaper does this make me a "shareholder" with 1/3 voting power times what ever number of EXP I hold?
By the look of it, any shareholder, even with 1M EXP, would be by definition overwhelmed by any monthly funding vote of the founders+directors.

Also, will the 770k in the dev reserve be exculded from voting, and how will this be done?

I agree.
Perhaps set up in 100x 100k EXP blocks locked in individual time locked contracts. This way, they can be unlocked in 100k tranches, used sparingly, and it wont cause the same level of panic.

They have not been touched, they are in cold storage. There will be a smart contract that will lock them up implemented soon. (The contract code is already made)

The way the smart contract works is that it makes them impossible to move for 90 days, and that is 90 days from when the contract is unlocked, and the unlocking is public. This will give us time to get the DAO coded, and make people feel more safe.

Homestead is coded and being updated at a certain block, and I believe after that the test contract goes in, we test that a couple days, and then the time lock contract for the 10 million goes in and then people can feel extra safe. Although the team is public and clearly we are in this for the long run, I think it is crucial that smart contracts are implemented to make people feel even more secure.

Thanks - Hoping I can generate a wallet offline though.
Has/is the mist wallet from ethereum been forked to expanse?

Any simple EXP wallets around? What wallet is presently recommended? thanks