|
MaidSafe: A Sleeping Giant? Let’s call it “The Internet of Freedom”
If you should put yourself in the shoes of a politician or a totalitarian dictator, what elements of society you would most want absolute control over. If you ask me I would think; money, education and communication. If you can control these 3, you have all the power within a certain group, society or nation.
The rise of cryptocurrencies (starting with Bitcoin) was (is) a way to disrupt the monetary system
and take away the grip of government and monopoly banking power.
What about education and communication, freedom of speech and press?
Well, there is a spot of light at the end of the tunnel.
Maidsafe has a technology that could undermine the government’s control of education and communication.
I do not intend to elaborate to much about their white paper, because you can read it on their website.
But you can see this is a completely new form of internet - a peer-to peer,
decentralised, censorship resistant data and communication network with no intermediaries or central point of failure. This is a massively disruptive technology that has the potential to wrest control of the other two levers of control (education and communication) from state power. So just as Bitcoin promised to fully disrupt the existing monetary order, MaidSafe and its proposed SAFE Network is planning to fully disrupt the existing order with regard to communication/eduction.
I noticed this a few years ago, but left it for what it was. I did see the potential but at that time a was not planning to get involved in crypto anymore. For reasons you all know.
Anyway, since that time, about 4 years ago it was some kind of dead calm about Maidsafe. Was it a sleeping giant? Four years is a long time in the newly emerged crypto world, and other
coins and technologies have come to market, attracting attention and dimming the light on
MaidSafe. Many people started to dismiss it. Market interest and price declined. Long term
holders became fidgety, some even selling out. This is probably the reason why I forgot about it.
Why did it take so long to suddenly wake up?
One reason was when the entire project was re-imagined and re-coded in Rust, which in
effect meant starting over. Another reason was the sheer complexity of the project, given that
what was being attempted had never been done before. In other words, every step forward
required research and development into entirely new areas. And as you can imagine, some of
these avenues proved to be dead ends, requiring various restarts and new approaches.
However, things have changed. Since the end of last year there has been a new sense of
momentum. The team has been growing, with more and more developers being brought on
board. They have hired marketing people and even customer support, and right now a brand
new website and explainer videos are being created. But the icing on the cake in this new
phase of growth was the announcement, a few weeks ago, that the MaidSafe team had
achieved a breakthrough - an in-house developed algorithm with the acronym PARSEC,
which enables consensus to be achieved across the network.
This is big news, as achieving consensus as to the “true state” of things, when talking about
distributed trust-less networks, is the holy grail of the disintermediation space. Right now this
algorithm is being coded and tested and the MaidSafe team are so confident that they have
declared that all exploratory research and development has now ended and that what follows
is simply building things that are already known. In other words, the MaidSafe project has
been significantly de-risked from an “ultimate success” viewpoint.
Currently the SAFE Network is in Alpha 2, with Alpha 3 literally around the corner. What
follows then is Alpha 4, which will include user-enabled “vaults” and test Safecoin - the
native crypto of the network. After rigorous testing of Alpha 4 it is expected the first public BETA version will go live in the wild.
So what is the SAFE Network exactly?
If you consider the existing internet, you realise it consists of powerful, centralised server
farms in a wheel and spoke arrangement with other corporate server services - all of which
host and route the data which makes up the internet. From the user’s perspective, we don’t
see these servers or the underlying technology, but experience the internet via the apps we
use every day. Things like websites, email, social networks, financial services, shopping etc.
The essence of the existing internet is that all data is managed by centralised third parties. As
a result our data is neither private nor secure. We know this of course, due to the constant
news of data hacks, which often includes personal data, email addresses and passwords, as
well as financial data, as in one’s credit card information.
It’s also insecure in another sense. Any time the government wants information it can go to
one of these corporate server companies and demand access to data. It can also interfere
with the working of the internet itself, by banning websites at the protocol level. And if
governments are not banning and blacklisting, as China does for example, they can still
enforce their will by applying pressure to service providers to remove or alter content.
The current internet is not censorship resistant. We are learning just how vulnerable the idea
of free speech is, when companies like Facebook and Twitter can have their arms twisted in
order to both monitor, remove and ban certain content.
The SAFE Network seeks to disrupt all of that. It does it at the fundamental level by managing
network data in a completely different way. Instead of the data being housed on third-party
servers, the SAFE Network’s data is stored on the devices of its users - on their smartphones
and computers. Furthermore, such users will be rewarded for storing this data by way of the
native crypto, Safecoin.
Not only is the data fully decentralised and distributed, it is also broken up into chunks and
fully encrypted, so those hosting the data are unable to access it in anyway - and more
importantly no one else can either, including governments.
What this means is that everything currently done on the internet, all the things you use the
internet for, can be replicated with apps on the SAFE Network - and even more innovative
apps besides.
Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptos, the SAFE Network is not built on a blockchain. In fact it
couldn’t be, due to the sheer size of the data involved. This means there is no public record
of the data and there are no scaling limitations. In fact, the way this network is designed it
becomes more efficient and faster, the more people who use it.
The network has its own native crypto, Safecoin, which will be used to pay for network
services and resources. In other words, it has massive utility built-in. Currently the MAID
token stands in for the future Safecoin and those holding MAID will be able to do a swap on
a one-for-one basis.
I am part of the testing group since a few weeks, playing around with Alpha 2 iterations and trying out the various apps that already exist. I did not have the time yet to give you some major conclusions but I can tell: the network is a complex beast under the hood, the user experience looks simple and intuitive.
It all begins by downloading the SAFE Browser. This is the gateway app that enables you to
create a self-authenticated account with ID name and passwords. It’s self authenticated
because that information never leaves your device. Once you have your account you use the
browser to access apps of your choosing, as well as browsing SAFE Network-only websites.
Apps will be developed independently, using the open source API and various resources
provided by MaidSafe. Currently there are test apps for email, data upload and storage,
messaging, music, social network, games and more. But once the network moves to Alpha 4
and beyond the way will be open for anyone, anywhere, to create apps for the network for
any conceivable purpose.
Once the network goes to live BETA release, anyone in the world will be able to download
the browser and get started. Unlike Bitcoin, which being a form of money requires a high
level of trust before people use it, the SAFE Network won’t pose the same “risk” to new users.
All they will need to do is download the free browser and start using apps - most of which
will certainly have free versions. On top of that, the viral incentive to host the network, by
the process known as “farming” (hosting network data on your smartphone or computer), will
ensure a lot of interest - as a way to earn free Safecoin.
A major benefit of this network will be the self-authenticated account. Once you have that, it
is used to authorise access to every other app you want, without the need to create different
accounts, usernames and passwords for all the services you use. This is a great boon for not
only simplicity but security.
My view on the MaidSafe project is that if it’s fully successful - and remember that it’s not a
home run yet - then it’s going to be huge. It’s so disruptive of the existing order, with a
powerful user-incentive structure, and applicable across so many different use-cases that
adoption could be quite rapid. This in turn would create an entire economy, fuelled by
Safecoin - a crypto where transactions are free and confirmed instantly, with no speed or
scaling issues.
Given this, it’s my judgement that MAID is substantially undervalued at present. It’s a sleeper
coin. Its future gain in value will be based on the project successfully achieving its goals. So
the risk is greater at this time, but so are the potential rewards.
https://maidsafe.net/
https://safenetwork.org/
https://www.maidsafe.net/docs/Safe%20Network%20Primer.pdf
|
![[Image: Tim-Draper-1-e1511799851652-760x400.jpg]](https://248qms3nhmvl15d4ne1i4pxl-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Tim-Draper-1-e1511799851652-760x400.jpg)
![[Image: Dfp3OEmW0AAysvs.jpg]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dfp3OEmW0AAysvs.jpg)
