[ANN] [Pre ICO] #openZen. The New Milestone of the Internet

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Official #openZen project bounty campaign thread!

Intro: I’m publishing the project in order to discuss it with the community, gather constructive(!) criticism. Our whitepaper is only a draft now, we have a lot of information to add there, so please tell us what you would like to see in it. Also we’re opening the Pre ICO in order to accelerate the launch of the first version of the application.

Hello everyone! My name is Ilya, I am the developer and founder of the project Zen. I am here to talk about the project which will completely change your view on the Internet. That project can change the image of the whole Internet, methods of communication familiar to us and other behavior patterns... In a few words, this project can change our life, and change it for better!

Zen is the result of my difficult and long-term research in spheres of information theory, sociology, mathematics, Information Ecology, Human Information Behavior, Human Information Interaction. So, working on this topics and investigating problems arising between people and information, I came to understanding the deep-seated problems of information and the Internet in particular. Trying to find a way of solving those problems I decided to start my own project Zen.

What is Zen?

Zen is an application and a decentralised network. What does it mean? It means that all the information is stored not on a single server or data centre, but on people’s computers. Obviously it’s encrypted. Decentralisation provides complete protection of the user’s information.
Zen is a desktop application which is an alternative to browser.
Zen is a semi-closed decentralized social network, a search engine and a repository of information. Here information is created, updated and consumed directly by the users of the system. Information is distributed among the members of the network in accordance with a p2p model.
Zen is a big new world, new universe with new rules, with your rules. Just imagine it and you will understand me. It is like you find a new continent where you can do everything.

Let me show you the interface so that you understand what’s going on.

Application interface for test

So now we’re familiar with the app, but how will it be useful for us?

What’s the idea: the application Zen is being developed in order to solve a number of systematic problems of the Internet, make people’s life easier. What kinds of problems does Zen solve? Which problems did become the reasons to create this project.

Problem overview
In the process of life and activity in the online space we faced a number of problems which are not being solved now and cause more and more harm every year.
Web is like an ocean of information. There is so much of it that it’s difficult to even imagine. But the majority of this information is just a waste rock. Only a small part of it is really valuable.

Information pollution and information overload
The main point that I’m trying to emphasise is that web is a plant for the production of informational noise and garbage.
It’s all this advertising, registration, enormous amount of low-quality information. Also it’s the constant e-mail spam, notifications from hundreds of internet services where you once left your data. Not to mention one-type internet services and millions of web sites.
It’s all called informational noise, some people call it informational garbage. It reaches us as soon as we open the browser. I’m sure you have faced it.

And thus here I will use a metaphor. There accumulates a lot of information mosquitoes around each of us, they drink our blood, suck our time complicating our lives. Those mosquitoes are all the ads, notifications, invitations and endless search of the relevant information.

Money
The Internet industry is a big vacuum cleaner to collect money. We use one service and we pay for it. Then we use another service and again we pay. I can agree that they improve the quality of our lives but why don’t we create a single universal service and pay it for a set of different functions. As an example imagine a swiss army knife.

That’s what we aim to do. But we are going even further. Since the system is decentralised and we don’t have significant expenditure on hardware support and stuf maintaining it. It means that our users don’t pay for it.

Crisis of trust in information and responsibility
Fakes news are everywhere. What’s the reason of them spreading so fast? It’s the lack of responsibility of the authors. Zen, for example, monitores it. If someone gives fake news and it is confirmed, then the rating of the publisher lowers. Would you now try to catch a major mass media and lower its rating? Now it is possible.

Reputation is an asset of the 21st century. It’s a mechanism of increasing responsibility. It cannot be bought or sold. You can only earn it doing socially useful actions or spend it. This mechanism will be fully described later.

All the information about the problems that we’re solving is available here or in the whitepaper.

Mission Statement

Our mission is to give the users of Internet the instrument to make life easier. This instrument will allow them to save their priceless time of life. Zen is a new milestone in the development of the Internet that will reduce the amount of informational noise and informational pollution.
Our mission is to reduce the role of advertising as means of getting profit. In our opinion it is the main reason if informational pollution. In the pursuit of advertising the business does not act in the interests of ordinary people, more and more manipulating their weaknesses, desires and pains.
Developing Zen we completely realise that Zen cannot belong to a limited number of people who will use it to increase only their own capital and material prosperity.
Our mission is to create an ecosystem for honest, fair and responsible people.
Our mission is to create an autonomous and smart society.

Core Objectives

Create an application that will be an alternative to web browsers, that will combine all the main user scenarios in the Internet: communication, search and creation of information, entertainment.
Reduce information overload, make life easier in the period of information age.
Make the application decentralised, independent from material interests of a limited number of people.
Reward users for socially useful actions. Any activity aiming to collect and organise knowledge should be rewarded as well as any socially useful actions.
Reduce negative influence of unscrupulous people, organisations and information. Any negative and destructive action should have an effect on life of its initiator.
Give people equal opportunities for personal development. All the people are equal and if someone has less resources than the other, it should not matter if the person wants to develop.

Why blockchain? - you can ask. Zen uses the technologies based on blockchain and its own cryptocurrency ZenToken as means of exchange, payments, voting, games, rewarding members of the application for useful activity…

What is ZenToken?

ZenToken can be used in the application in order to pay for purchases, content, voting and other social interactions of subjects between each other and with the world.
ZenToken acts as a unit of measure of the economic condition inside the platform Zen.
ZenToken are required for Zen platform to operate and for access of users to the program.

Pre ICO
The project is being developed by an independent team of software engineers. We’ve decided to launch Pre ICO for the project in order to accelerate its development, get feedbacks, comments and opinions, draw attention to the problems that are being solved. We are doing it in order to refine the conceptual ideas with the help of society because that’s you who will use the application.

So what do you think of it? What else could we improve?

We would also like to attract indifferent to this project professionals who understand these problems and their seriousness. We would like to see in our team strong mathematicians, lawyers and programmers in order to fully implement our ideas. So if you share our ideas and would like to become part of our team, please contact me (facebook, email: [b]ilya.druzhinin@protonmail.ch[/b]).

The minimum required amount (equivalent to $300,000) is necessary to strengthen our team, launch of the first version of the application, to run a large-scale ICO campaign and to attract participants of the project. Pre ICO also includes collection of funds for the preparation of marketing campaigns, advertising in social networks, registration of all the necessary documents.

Pre ICO will be held on the official website of the project Zen http://openzen.co, using smart contracts of the Ethereum platform.

Everyone who is interested in this project and agree to the terms of this campaign can support the project by taking part in our Pre ICO and get ZenToken.

Distribution of ZenToken
Whole amount of released tokens: 270 000 000 ZenToken
Pre ICO Fund: 20,000,000 ZenToken
The minimum amount, that will let us move forward faster is 1500 ETH. Maximum: 5500 ETH.
Time of the Pre ICO: from 31st July to 31st August 2017. It will last only one month.

Where will the money be used?
Research and development, team: 40%
Marketing: 30%
Registration, office: 20%
Technological infrastructure: 10%

Brief description of architecture
Zen is basically an innovative approach to design and user scenarios. We aim to create the most convenient interface for working with the Internet and to optimize the user scenarios. Adaptive and highly adjustable interface where a user can choose what he wants to see and what he does not. Unlike other projects that are developing technologies, we first develop a unified interface that will allow the users to find and create information easier, to communicate better and to spend fun time online.

The basic functions of the Zen system will be implemented through the combination of several technologies, including Ethereum, IPFS, etc. We assume that the platform Zen will have a distributed decentralized architecture with the content in IPFS and a blockchain Ethereum as a computational mechanism.

IPFS
IPFS - is an interplanetary file system (IPFS). Most of the content, including documents, articles, photos, videos, and various updates to the platform will be stored there. Zen users get another chance to earn income from their own content or storage space if part of the information will be stored on their computers.

Distributed social network
The platform Zen is a distributed social network. Distributed Social Network (DSN) is a network established to protect the privacy of user’s information. User’s personal data is stored exclusively on the client machine of the user. Fully decentralized DSN differ in a complete absence of server. The client of such a network is installed on a user’s computer and acts as a client and a server simultaneously. Zen is a software that implements a distributed social network. Emphasis is put on extensive privacy settings.

Zen architecture is based on a p2p and f2f model. The information generated by the users is spread between them, i.e. a distributed data storage is implemented. All the data is accumulated in special network nodes. These are common users who act as the nodes.

Public content is stored in IPFS, nodes. Personal data is distributed according to the model of p2p.

Road Map
The project has a status of a semi-closed system until the beta version of it. Access to it is given to the holders of ZenToken and the people with invitations.

Pre ICO from 31/07/2017 to 30/08/2017
Goals: accelerate the development of the first version of the application, collect feedbacks, opinions, to refine the concept and attract new people to our team.

ICO from 15th October 2017 to 15th November 2017
Goals: attract people for testing the alpha version

v.0.1 - december 2017
Goals: Windows app, integration with Ethereum.
Modules: Communities, profile, email, search, news of communities and friends

v.0.2 - Q1 2018
Goals: MacOS app, launch of TestNet
Features:
Modules: messenger, calls, games, lotteria, articles
Ratings
Advanced profile: photo, video, notes

v.0.3 - Q2 2018
Goals: development and testing of the blockchain Zen and the instruments of collective intelligence
Features:
Modules: startups, cinema, radio, music, calendar, events
ZenToken wallet

v.0.4 - Q3 2018
Goals: the version for Linux systems, commissioning of the own blockchain for Zen
Features:
Implementing the function of mining
Modules: educational
Kids (the version of Zen for kids)

v.0.5 - Q4 2018
Goals: integration with the business community, mobile app
Modules: stock exchange, conduction of private business in Zen, store

v.1.0 - Q3 2019
Goals: semi-closed public version, public testing

Conclusion
We are creating a clean Internet where you can find everything you need: friends, mail, calls, cinema, games, articles and much more — all of it together and you don’t need to register ten times in similar web sites.

Again, we’re not creating a ‘killer’ of browsers. We offer an alternative. Browsers with all those millions of web pages, notifications, advertisements, spam, fraud, bots, enormous amount of low-quality information, that is what we’re so used to, will remain. We only offer a different view on the Internet, we suggest you make your choice yourself. We’re making a more convenient format of interaction with information and the Internet.
It’s going to be a long and hard way but we’re ready for it and we know what to do. So we’re waiting for the support of those people who share our views.

From this moment, weekly reports on the project development will be posted on this post and in social networks. I invite you to take part in discussing the project and problems. Please share this post with your friends so that they could also leave their opinion. Accompany your repost with the hashtag #openZen so that we could track the activity and take part in your discussion.

I invite you to take part in discussing the project and problems
Stay in touch with me personally, I’ll be glad to talk to everyone interested in the project.
Good luck to everyone and let’s together change the world for better!

Links
Official site: http://openzen.co
Email subscribe: http://eepurl.com/cw5cHz
Medium: https://medium.com/@openzen
Facebook: http://facebook.com/openzen
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JustOpenZen
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/openZen
Telegram channel: http://t.me/openZen
Telegram group: http://t.me/openZen_eng

#openZen - Pre ICO: ANN 31/07 - 31/08