MaidSafe is decentralizing the internet like Bitcoin decentralizes currency

[bitMTW]

"We want to remove big technology companies from the network the way Bitcoin can remove banks from trade.”

MaidSafe gave a presentation at the Inside Bitcoins conference in NYC. Any thoughts on their plans to "Bitcoin-ify" / decentralizing Internet?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/08/beyond-bitcoin-crypto-ownership-companies-hope-youre-ready-to-decentralize-everything-on-the-internet/

[RawDog]

"We want to remove big technology companies from the network the way Bitcoin can remove banks from trade.”

MaidSafe gave a presentation at the Inside Bitcoins conference in NYC. Any thoughts on their plans to "Bitcoin-ify" / decentralizing Internet?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/08/beyond-bitcoin-crypto-ownership-companies-hope-youre-ready-to-decentralize-everything-on-the-internet/

Wow - what a concept.  I love this.  But is this all 'talk' - or is it a real project?  I am not impressed that 'it has been in development for 7 years'.  This tells me the coders are WAY too slow to make a real project. 

Where can I find more details about there fund raising efforts?  They seem pretty quiet to me.

[lepirate]

This is a really cool concept. I'm a bit confused though. Until there are enough people running the software, will some files become inaccessible if someone turn of their computer?

[Lorenzo]

It would work by splitting a file into “encrypted shards” with many copies distributed over the network (so if one person turns their computer off, you’re not out of luck in retrieving the document).

It kinda sounds a bit like Datacoin (decentralized data storage) or perhaps Namecoin (decentralized DNS).

[dirvine]

"We want to remove big technology companies from the network the way Bitcoin can remove banks from trade.”

MaidSafe gave a presentation at the Inside Bitcoins conference in NYC. Any thoughts on their plans to "Bitcoin-ify" / decentralizing Internet?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/08/beyond-bitcoin-crypto-ownership-companies-hope-youre-ready-to-decentralize-everything-on-the-internet/

Wow - what a concept.  I love this.  But is this all 'talk' - or is it a real project?  I am not impressed that 'it has been in development for 7 years'.  This tells me the coders are WAY too slow to make a real project.  

Where can I find more details about there fund raising efforts?  They seem pretty quiet to me.

Code is here https://github.com/maidsafe
Wiki here https://github.com/maidsafe/MaidSafe/wiki
Library overview here http://maidsafe.net/network-platform-developers
fundraising here http://www.safecoin.io/
Lots of thoughts etc. here http://metaquestions.me
Papers etc. here http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=maidsafe
Press stuff here http://maidsafe.net/press

We are not happy it took 8 years either :-( We did this very underfunded and with lots of obstacles along the way. It is a pretty huge effort though with lots of new concepts and innovations. Now we just want to have as many people as possible working on it as well. Part of funds are to create 6 international (independent) dev pods to compete with us and improve the core as we move forward. It's not our network and cannot be so we are delighted to be doing this. The future for us will be as great as anyone joining the project SAFE. Please feel free to jump on the mailing list  (you will see this is not MaidSafe, its all of us). https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/maidsafe-development

[edit typos]

[jabo38]

I understand that Maidsafe wants to sell safecoins to help raise funds.  But if I buy safecoins, how does it benefit somebody else to buy them from me.  Basically, if I try to sell safecoins, why would somebody think it is good to buy from me?

[ubuntuLover]

This is a really cool concept. I'm a bit confused though. Until there are enough people running the software, will some files become inaccessible if someone turn of their computer?

Im still waiting for someone to answer this guy's question.

[dirvine]

This is a really cool concept. I'm a bit confused though. Until there are enough people running the software, will some files become inaccessible if someone turn of their computer?

Im still waiting for someone to answer this guy's question.

No it won't, unless you have a network of 4 nodes or something. The network reconfigures and has a mechanism like this (basci explination, more info on wiki papers and code).

live copies min 2 max (generally) six
Off-line copies up to 16 (under debate this is too high after the network is over a few thousand nodes, just for example though this is fine)

If a node is off line and comes back on line then he is live again. (thats why sometimes more than six)
the off-line nodes are held in order of last seen.

If a node is off line for too long it will be pushed off the chain here. This will mean the node lost a data element. This  goes against his rank.

In this mechanism you can see we randomly select nodes, as each data element is pushed around the network (if live copies <3 then 4 more live copies made) until it finds a place it does not get lost. This may be a node that is off for many hours/days/weeks and holding data not requested too often. That data will make it's way to archive chunks after a while though. This is another story and too much for me to type as I would miss my pint that will be waiting for me :-)

I hope this makes some sense. I think of it like we drop a chunk on the network, it moves around testing locations till it finds a suitable rest (sort of like a drop of water in a bucket). Like ants who will continually send an ant up a path they are not going, in case there is food there since the last ant looked (could be poison and the die on that route, but ants will randomly go that way, so does our data chunks).

[dirvine]

I understand that Maidsafe wants to sell safecoins to help raise funds.  But if I buy safecoins, how does it benefit somebody else to buy them from me.  Basically, if I try to sell safecoins, why would somebody think it is good to buy from me?

That is then setting the market value for safecoin.

I think safecoin == cash (anonymous)
bitcoin == ledger (accountable)

Maybe not fair but a fast comparison.

[prophetx]

I understand that Maidsafe wants to sell safecoins to help raise funds.  But if I buy safecoins, how does it benefit somebody else to buy them from me.  Basically, if I try to sell safecoins, why would somebody think it is good to buy from me?

That is then setting the market value for safecoin.

I think safecoin == cash (anonymous)
bitcoin == ledger (accountable)

Maybe not fair but a fast comparison.

as i understand it people need these coins to buy secure storage services on the maidsafe p2p network, therefor if there is a market for secure storage of data (i think there is but perhaps others may disagree) then people will need those coins to get access to it.

[dirvine]

I understand that Maidsafe wants to sell safecoins to help raise funds.  But if I buy safecoins, how does it benefit somebody else to buy them from me.  Basically, if I try to sell safecoins, why would somebody think it is good to buy from me?

That is then setting the market value for safecoin.

I think safecoin == cash (anonymous)
bitcoin == ledger (accountable)

Maybe not fair but a fast comparison.

as i understand it people need these coins to buy secure storage services on the maidsafe p2p network, therefor if there is a market for secure storage of data (i think there is but perhaps others may disagree) then people will need those coins to get access to it.

Not really, miners (farmers) protect resources like bitcoinn miners calculate hashes. It really is as simple as that we swap cpu time for disk space. So providing online disk space is like increasing the hash/second rate. It is that simple. No relation to buying any resource at all.

We do have that ability just now (quid pro quo) but will not release with that in mind.

[ruletheworld]

At 17,000 Safecoin @$500, the market cap is about $126 million already
(2^32/17000 * 500). Just laying it out there so people can make an informed decision whether or not to buy in.

[bitfromit]

Also found this article of 2 days ago http://bitcoinmagazine.com/12397/maidsafe-is-making-data-safe/

[bitfromit]

At 17,000 Safecoin @$500, the market cap is about $126 million already
(2^32/17000 * 500). Just laying it out there so people can make an informed decision whether or not to buy in.

it is high, but there appears to be a 40% bonus if bought in first week http://www.safecoin.io/

[prophetx]

At 17,000 Safecoin @$500, the market cap is about $126 million already
(2^32/17000 * 500). Just laying it out there so people can make an informed decision whether or not to buy in.

actually that's not really accurate, or just plain wrong. or overly simplistic view of the world.

since the production of the other coins is dependent on "farming" and so on.  So it is like claiming that the BTC market cap is 10B even though only 55% or whatever of the total coin have been mined.

when those other coins come online it means that they are being created via the service mechanisms that maidsafe uses and therefor should provide some multiple of the book value of those services or perhaps a multiple of the revenue/profit generated by "farming" or some combination thereof including the perceived future value of those services.  just like the very last bitcoin mined should be worth many multiples of the first ever bitcoin mined...

what it is saying is that if they had that system in place now they think that is is valued at 8 M as an "economy"

more sophisticated people than many of the people on this msg board have figured it out already.

[prophetx]

It would work by splitting a file into “encrypted shards” with many copies distributed over the network (so if one person turns their computer off, you’re not out of luck in retrieving the document).

It kinda sounds a bit like Datacoin (decentralized data storage) or perhaps Namecoin (decentralized DNS).

yea but they don't use the blockchain based p2p system like bitcoin, which is why they actually scale better for data storage.  at least from what i understand.

[inBitweTrust]

actually that's not really accurate, or just plain wrong. or overly simplistic view of the world.

since the production of the other coins is dependent on "farming" and so on.  So it is like claiming that the BTC market cap is 10B even though only 55% or whatever of the total coin have been mined.

when those other coins come online it means that they are being created via the service mechanisms that maidsafe uses and therefor should provide some multiple of the book value of those services or perhaps a multiple of the revenue/profit generated by "farming" or some combination thereof including the perceived future value of those services.  just like the very last bitcoin mined should be worth many multiples of the first ever bitcoin mined...

what it is saying is that if they had that system in place now they think that is is valued at 8 M as an "economy"

more sophisticated people than many of the people on this msg board have figured it out already.

The difference is with Bitcoin there was no pre-mining or IPO. So the Bitcoin initial valuation was merely the value that people were willing to pay for the coins or a market CAP of fractions of a penny. Maidsafe is starting with a market CAP of ~10million initially with a starting valuation ~126million.

As an investor the risk appears to be a hardfork of the code to be added as a future bitcoin sidechain without an IPO and without a 15 % tax on farming.