How I feel about Idena

4 min readApr 3, 2020

Yes, haha, I will be answering my own questions. I’m not 100% full of myself, hopefully I’ll start the conversation and then see how you feel about Idena too.

In my last post ( My introduction to Idena ), I asked these 4 head-scratchers. Here’s my take…

What good can come from a system like Idena? 😇

Use cases are listed on Idena Technology page, of them all: Global universal basic income is the one that grabs me! It’s in my brain like a little worm, I love the idea.

… Participation in the network is rewarded with minting and can be considered as a form of the universal basic income sufficient to cover network services (for example, sending messages) as well as the bill for the Internet service and electricity consumed. …

To me, this paints a picture of a world where everyone has some money, maybe enough to buy basic food, possibly shelter. Those who want luxury can work for more, but the bottom line is, as a species, we can all survive.

Likewise, what bad could come from it? 🛰

We are an anonymous group of like-minded engineers and computer scientists who stand for the human right to share information and exchange value freely and privately.

May I play devils advocate for a moment? Say, the Idena developers are not acting in good faith. they would not tell us their bad intentions would they? These are some stoner thoughts, but, please let go of what you think you know for a minute…

Lets’ follow on with the thought that Idena developers are malicious. They are not who they say they are. They could be some evil genius, or even not human at all. Watch this trailer, or better still the whole film, you’ll see what I mean.

Davey, they’re only asking for about half an hour of our time per week and participants can remain anonymous!

Said no-one ever. But, it is true. What can be gained from a network of willing participants, creating and solving puzzles? Are flips actually bed-time reading for an army of stressed out AI or ET beings, or maybe it’s a training regime? I don’t know, but here’s a critical look at parts of the system:

We run pre-compiled binaries on our home computers, malicious code here might be difficult to detect. And due to mining rewards: users are indirectly encouraged to update the software as soon as it is released.
While I’m guessing it’s possible to remain 100% anonymous on the Idena network by using TOR to hide your IP, most people won’t do this. The average user will reveal an IP, in some cases this will be their home internet connection, it will expose an approximate location to peers on the network.
The flips that we submit give some insight into how our minds work. Is this information valuable and can it be exploited?
Frogs don’t notice they’re being boiled if the saucepan is heated slowly. While the network could be/appear legit right now, there’s potential for this to change gradually over time. Would you notice?

What do you think? Me: it’s a little far fetched to say the Idena team are a devious bunch. But, I do feel it’s healthy to entertain the possibility. Next up, I’ll write what I think is most likely, bringing things back to earth in T minus 5–4–3–2–1.

What is most likely to happen? 🎯

My guess is that somewhere in between these two extremes lies a truth and the direction Idena will head in the future.

Occam’s razor simply states that of any given set of explanations for an event occurring, the simplest one is most likely the correct one.

Let’s go with this. But, I don’t want to forget completely about my dream and nightmare scenarios. I’ll keep it simple.

The Idena team is being honest and truthful, they will act in accordance to their manifesto. This seems to be the case so far, but let’s be aware that this could change quickly/slowly from internal/external influences.
The result will be… some of Idena’s unique use cases will become reality. Awesome! I look forward to seeng progress.

Do you want to dedicate time to be part of this? 🖖

Personally, I weighed up the pros and cons over a few days. Thinking on the toilet & in the shower.

On one hand I have the chance to be part of something beautiful, a basic income for every human ( plus a whole lot more ). On the other, there is fear of the unknown, with unlikely catastrophic and unforeseeable repercussions.

What do you think happened? Well…