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So one of the most unfriendly things about Ethereum is that every time I want to interact with a contract I need to load up the ABI from an external, centralized source.

Sure Parity lets me save these ABI's once loaded, but MEW does not when I use a Ledger Nano S.

Is there a way to embed the interface into a part of the smart contract so that they are more like web apps, where the user simply browses to the address and then has immediate full access to the smart contract without needing to search online for ABI's.

Case in point, look up CryptoDerivatives and look up their faq for adding contracts, each time you make a sell contract you must add the ABI from these external sources. Without a centralised website these smart contracts would be very much unusable for people such as myself.

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Yes and no.

Contracts have (will have) metadata that points to Swarm hashes that can host ABI definitions and contract source.

http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/miscellaneous.html?highlight=swarm#contract-metadata

Even though this method is not widespread yet, it will be in the future, though.

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    Thank for your answer. I am happy that there is a solution on the road map that will eventually solve this problem and make Ethereum a lot more accessible and easier to use.
    – Joseph
    Apr 2, 2017 at 8:18

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