While the promise of a decentralized Internet has been tried and tested by various teams working on distinct technologies, the scope of the SAFE Network by the MaidSafe team brings together all of the missing pieces. Security of users and their data, in addition to the sustainability and autonomy of the network, are all necessary for providing a viable replacement for the censorship and surveillance prone Internet we use today. The past few months for MaidSafe have seen great advancements towards realising this freedom prioritising network - in particular having opportunities for wide-scale community testing which is a huge milestone in any decentralized network. With each testing phase, the team has gained a wealth of knowledge for improving speed and reducing complexity in how nodes connect to each other and how they store and route data.
Decentralized networks typically have a shared goal to remove central points of control and the key component of SAFE is to remove dependence on servers (as we currently know them) completely. While there isn’t any single server controlling the existing Internet, the vulnerabilities they bring to individual services (and those who use them) are vast. It seems there is at least one large hack announced each week of some server-based Internet service (ranging everything from dating sites to United States voting records) which exposes the personal information of its users. By hosting these services on technology which distributes all of this data securely over a global network, there is no place on the network for hackers to gain access to data used by these services.
Much like other decentralized networks such as Bittorrent and Bitcoin, the SAFE Network relies on participants from all over the world to contribute to the network, but unlike these earlier technologies, SAFE will provide the whole package of an alternate Internet. This includes privacy and economic viability for network participants, in addition to censorship resistance of public data and user control of personal data. It requires using both existing protocols and standards (such as tried and tested cryptography) while enhancing other designs for a more efficient autonomy and improved obfuscation for greater privacy. The MaidSafe team also believes in strong user experiences which was tested concurrently with the technical designs. With the client application interface design, anyone using Windows, OS X or Linux can try out connecting to the test network and upload data from documents to websites with little technical understanding.
The coming weeks and months look to be very exciting for the SAFE Network as the MaidSafe team continues to release increasingly advanced test networks which anyone will be able to connect to. Weekly developer updates are regularly posted in our community forum (http://forum.safenetwork.io) which serves as the best resource for keeping up to date on the most recent news. MaidSafe has also been featured as speakers and panelists in several events ranging from Liberty Forum in New Hampshire to the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain and will continue to reach out to communities who prioritise privacy and security for the Internet. The world is at the cusp of realising the potential for a truly decentralized Internet and you are invited to this community of individuals eager for real privacy, security and freedom!
SAFE Network Introduction
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