The ‘Safe Network’ in 90 seconds
Yes, the one that inspired Silicon Valley season 5.
The MaidSafe team thinks the internet is fundamentally broken. Their new Safe Network will replace corporate servers (like centralized Facebook data centers) with a peer-to-peer network (like BitTorrent) — where all data can be spread out, securely backed up across multiple computers using spare storage space, and owned by the humans who generated it rather than the corporations who harvested it.
A working Alpha version is already available.
It was invented years before Bitcoin was announced, and it’s powered by a different kind of cryptocurrency called Safe Network Tokens which don’t use blockchains at all — so there are no scaling problems (websites and data actually get faster as more people use and cache them); coin transactions are instant (rather than simply “fast”); and there are never any transaction fees for sending coins.
It’s free to browse this new internet — currently using the Safe Browser available here, and likely with a simple browser extension in the future — but you’ll pay a nominal amount (fractions of pennies) for uploading data. You’ll also get paid for hosting other people’s data; assuming you want to offer up your own storage, then the fees cancel out and you end up with unlimited private cloud backup for all of your files.
The greatest thing, in my opinion, is that people who create apps for this network will get paid in Safe Network Tokens automatically based on the usage of those apps — they won’t need to rely on advertising. To quote a recent new hire:
When we no longer pay for technology with our personal information and our attention, it allows for something remarkable: the worth of a product is based on its utility — what it can do for society — not on its ability to exploit people’s intimate data.
Want to learn more? Dive deep with this explanation if you’re familiar with Bitcoin terminology, otherwise visit their website. Then head over to their subreddit.
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