Looks like there won’t be a lack of privacy-first ROMs in the near future. I found out about GrapheneOS from the privacytools.io, where I more expected to see something about /e/, but couldn’t. It doesn’t look like a direct rival so far, but rather like a niche product such as CopperheadOS. However, GrapheneOS only at the beginning of its journey.
yeah, that’s the way I was hoping e would go when I perked in Kickstarter 
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GrapheneOS is the new project of the main CopperheadOS developer (Daniel Micay). No wonder it’s similar. 
And there are more privacy/security focused Android distributions now:
They support mostly only Pixel-devices but they have some nice features that eelo should think about integrating (relocked bootloader, verified boot, reproducible builds, integrated backup solution, remote attestation, VPN service,…)
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I have heard that Pixel devices are the most suitable for such a purposes because they allow bootloader re-lock (rare these days), which is the keystone for security.
There is a project that tries to catalogue devices that support verified boot (and thus relock). Xiaomi Mi A2 looks like a good candidate which is why it’s supported by CalyxOS.
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Thank you for the link! That’s exactly what I needed right now.
Now, the point of my interest is the new Mi A3, which seems to be a good all-rounder with low SAR, and there is already a chance that it will soon receive LineageOS.
We are also a little worried about how few developers and maintainers are currently working on GrapheneOS - the project currently resembles a one-man show.
© golem de A test by Moritz Tremmel and Sebastian Grüner released on 11 December 2019, 12:03 p.m.
well – i don’t have any reliable numbers about the /e/ development employees, but i expect, that the actual situation here unfortunately doesn’t look much better resp. more promising. 
@mash, I very much hope your hunch isn’t true. Those numbers should make us look forward to the future, shouldn’t they?
if you are looking for more objective numbers, you should perhaps take a look at:
https://gitlab.e.foundation/groups/e/-/analytics
or it’s subprojects.
unfortunately that’s not far away from something, which may be called a one-man-show by others too.
nevertheless i really like this project and would always defend it’s practical significance on a social level – i.e. spreading and cultivating an awareness in regard to privacy concerns --, but on a technical level resp. the available actual development capacities, i’m still not overly convinced or satisfied.
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Revision: In the meantime I’ve corrected my opinion in some nuances and tend more than ever to @mash’s estimations.
well – this kind of crowd founding isn’t the only option, how you can back a project like /e/.
i personally would see cooperations with companies, that need a secure and trustworthy mobile platform for their products and internal use as much more lucrative path to gain development resources. that’s more or less the strategy, which is used in most important open source projects of more ambitious scale.
but i think, there are obvious reasons, why /e/ and it’s not more than cosmetic/minimalist adaptations of android doesn’t look like a promising alternative for this kind of partnership and professional contribution. in this respect it really works only on a much less demanding privat level resp. as a social movement, but from a strict technical point of view it doesn’t provide a radical alternative, which would open promising and fundamental different perspectives.
but as i already mentioned, i still like /e/ and it’s efforts, but we also have to express this kind of honest skeptics and self critics of the project, if we really want to change the status quo.