How confident are you that Maidsafe will deliver?

Just curious, what are different people’s confidence levels on whether Maidsafe will deliver on it’s promises. We know that what the Safe Network promises is huge and if it succeeds in delivering the goods, I think it’s fair to say that it will easily overtake Bitcoin and Ethereum. But as an investor the biggest risk I see is obviously the team not being able to solve the problems that it will take to create a working Safe Network. It is a monumental task they are taking on and something that has never been done before. Along with the fact that they’ve been working on it for over 10 years. What if there is a roadblock in the future and a solution just can’t be found to get past it? I understand that huge progress has been made in the last year and many pieces of the network have been built such as self-authentication, but it’s still yet to be seen whether all these pieces can be tied in together and form a secure network. Is there a high chance we run into a roadblock that kills the project in the future? Or have you looked deeply enough into the code and done enough due diligence to be confident in this project succeeding?

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There’s still much to do but I’m now confident that something close to what is aimed for will now be achievable, mainly because of the last network tests having proved the fundamentals are working.

This is just my sense of things and opinion as a long term follower, and I’m well aware that this is not an easy question to answer, so I could be wrong.

I’m not sure what the value of this question and any responses will be, but I didn’t want it to go unanswered.

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Thanks for the reply. I don’t mean to offend but I feel like many people on this forum are too caught up in what Maidsafe promises and not looking at the possibility that it could not succeed in it (no matter how small or big that chance is). Just wanted to bring in some healthy skepticism. People are investing their money into MaidsafeCoins and as investors it’s important to look at the potential downsides and risks maybe more so than the potential upsides.

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Although we all want the full fat solution, I wouldn’t be too focused on it alone. My sense from various posts from David and others is that they have a few ways to win, with enterprise solutions and individual parts of the puzzle that could still be innovative and have great value for other applications. While this may not help the value of the coin necessarily, if you’re also a shareholder then there are more options than binary success/failure.

Companies pivot all the time, and I can see all sorts of outcomes which are positive without the full network purring away in the wild.

But yes, risks abound. I imagine almost all posters know this, so perhaps this thread is more for newbs/lurkers. But common sense says any crypto investment is astronomically high risk (compared to traditional “high risk” junk bonds etc). It’s the Wild West.

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This coin format in the crypto world also means unlike a stake in other private companies, you have a market determined liquid asset at all times, so you don’t have to wait for “success” to cash out. You can win while MaidSafe still loses, to put it crudely/callously.

To answer your question, i would guess that the team will almost certainly succeed at something which will have a big impact, I just don’t know if it’ll be a B2C network splash or a particular sector they’ll transform. But I can’t see them packing the office up and letting the code rust (no pun intended) if they discover the full fat network isn’t viable.

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whether maidsafe will deliver on it’s promises

To properly answer this, I think some clarification on the promises needs to be made. Let’s take the goals as stated by safenetwork.org:

####decentralized data storage and communications network that provides a secure, efficient and low-cost infrastructure for everyone

They will deliver this no questions asked. Secure will be delivered because the crypto is already shown to be secure. Efficient will be delivered because there is no clear metric for this (cheeky!). Low cost I think will be delivered but I’m the least confident of because the incentive structure has not yet been finalized.

On the efficiency point - high efficiency is defined as lots of output for little input. The inputs for a user are ‘data’ and ‘cost per data unit’. The outputs for the user are ‘security’, ‘privacy’, ‘durability’, ‘availability’. The cost of data on the safe network is not known, so comparison can’t be made. But I’m confident the safe network will provide the most output for the least input compared to any other system. It was designed to do exactly that!

####Secure Access For Everyone

I consider the SAFE network ecosystem to be the most user-friendly in the p2p network arena by far. Torrenting included. Everyone will be able to use the SAFE network. I am completely confident of this promise being delivered.

This includes the maidsafe apps, documentation, community… the whole lot. It may change in the future, but for now, it’s at the top of the list for me.

####[reduce] data theft and surveillance [due to data centers and servers]

The redundant nature of the network, the way it handles churn, the way it does self-encryption and chunks; all these things mean the promise is already delivered. Surveillance will be improved, but I think a lot of people in this community overstate the improvement - I think tracking will still happen in some form (but to a much lesser degree than the current www).

####uses advanced peer-to-peer technology that joins together the spare computing capacity of all SAFE users, creating a global network

I’m not confident this goal will be delivered. I think the efficiency of data centers means most spare computing resources will be unfeasible for the network. Performance is an issue due to the decentralized nature, however I do think it will always be possible to join the safe network as a farmer and contribute resources (just not spare resources). In the short term I do believe spare resources will be useful to the network, but longer term, I doubt it. Many people on this forum disagree with me on this point!

the biggest risk I see is obviously the team not being able to solve the problems that it will take to create a working Safe Network

The team (from what I’ve experienced anyhow) is absolutely first class. It’s hard to really get a feel for this unless you look at the code repositories or technical documentation, but I am confident a) the problems are solvable and b) the team can navigate those problems.

The main reason I’m confident the problems can be solved is they mainly boil down to a few very specific communication and messaging problems. Bitcoin has shown you can measure and communicate value very specifically (in their case through proof-of-work) and reach a definite conclusion about which communications to utilise (ie the ones which represents the most cumulative value). So I feel the problems are largely solved and are now ‘mere implementation details’ (easy to say!).

The biggest risk I see is the performance being too low which may lead to users not being willing to prioritise security / privacy over performance. I think the market size of people who value security / privacy over performance is still large enough that the safe network will be a huge success. Sort of like how there are enough people who are looking for alternatives to the existing financial system to make bitcoin a huge success (even though it’s only a relatively small portion of the global population).

What if there is a roadblock in the future and a solution just can’t be found to get past it?

I guess some shifting of the goals will be required. That’s the only pragmatic thing I can imagine could be done. A non-global safe network is still very valuable for a lot of people, and that road is already completely cleared.

Is there a high chance we run into a roadblock that kills the project in the future?

No. There may be hiccups, but I don’t see there being any technical roadblocks that would kill the project. There will be political or social difficulties along the way, there may be some goalpost shifting, but I’m confident there won’t be technical roadblocks.

have you looked deeply enough into the code and done enough due diligence to be confident in this project succeeding?

Absolutely yes, I’ve done a fair bit of work with the code particularly in the name of due diligence and I have extremely high confidence in this project succeeding. The two main pieces of due diligence I’ve presented publicly are Profiling Vault Performance and The SAFE network explained using bitcoin terminology. There’s other unpresented work I’ve done behind the scenes, and my confidence in the SAFE network has continued to grow since I first looked into it.

For sure there are difficult challenges ahead, but I am completely confident they will be met.

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Sorry but you are very pesimistic… 5 years to live? You are crazy man lol… If maid start live after 5 years later so every other project would blame maidsafe before it’s even started…
You would be right if you were talking these things in 2014 after ico but not now after so much progress in this project. I already feel project is coming very soon. So get a deep breath and relax…

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Great reply - as thorough as always :slightly_smiling_face:

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The test nets so far have proven the core concepts, which gives me confidence that with tweaks and improvements it will get better until it’s ready for use, at least for data storage.

No network has been completely stable yet, so the work currently being done on node aging & data chains will be critical to achieving a stable network.

Creating bullet proof stability for the Safe network & making sure it’s not vulnerable to any kind of feasible attack seems to be a huge challenge, but these are 100% required for people to trust Safe to store significant value on it, e.g. with Safecoin plus other tokens & crypto assets.

Given these ultra high requirements & seeing the team’s achievements so far, I have a good level of expectation that they’ll achieve this, though I imagine there’s also a real chance that it’s just a bit too ambitious.

The market seems to be cautiously pessimistic about their chances, but I am cautiously optimistic.

Really looking forward to the next test nets, app developments, data chains implementations, and hopefully before too long, a beta network :slight_smile:

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You can’t argue with facts.
PoC has been validated, the risk profile changed drastically this year.

You will have to wonder: are these people “too caught up” because they are irrational fanatics, or because there is proof that this concept is valid?

You decide.

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Looking at MaidSafe and seeing how many people are into the tech, it looks like a bright future.

It’s a massive project with no example to follow. They are building the future of the internet.

Development has been going on since before bitcoin and there is still a lot of development happening, which is great to see.

How confident are you that Maidsafe will deliver?
This question has been asked so many times…mainly by investors who want to make money.
But a genuine concern to say the least.

Good question.

Loaded question.

Deliver means many things and I’m confident the concept of the safenet work is doable and if anybody is up to the challenge its David and Nick and their very competent but thin Team.

And Maidsafe has already delivered in a number of ways. The current coin has appreciated somewhat, jobs have been created and a community has risen from an idea.

But delivering the code is not the same as delivering a successful and widely adopted Safenet and a successful and profitable Safecoin and a successful and growing team and a successful business and foundation. There are many moving parts here that are all part of “delivering” and one cannot be without the other. Its a package.

When Maidsafe did the crowdsale in 2014 - and if I recall correctly - they were forecasting a live network in 6 months and there were 500 developers chomping at the bit to start building apps for Maidsafe. Thats more than 3 years ago. If this crowdsale was today (sans history), MS could raise $50 million or more, maybe $100M. Why? Because investors love to hear great things can happen and need to park money where it will “likely” grow. And Im not talking about ICO novice investors. Well Maidsafe missed that boat evidenced by the BttF struggles and needs to revisit some of the other important and neglected and integral “delivery” components.

Nobody cares (aside from many here) anymore that Maidsafe thinks it can build a Safenet. Nobodies hardly watching anymore. The real guage of success is a measure of buzz outside this forum, is there any buzz? What people care about is seeing and feeling progess. Asking this forum if they think “Maidsafe will deiver” is like asking a chef if his food is good.
Maidsafe can deliver some aspects of the package now. It does not matter if they take another 2 years to make it perfect. Nobody counting anyway.

So the question should be “What, besides code, should Maidsafe deliver in the next 30 - 60 days?”

  1. Release what you have. And let the world play.

  2. Start marketing this as the NEXT GO-TO place for developers. (yes it cost money)

  3. Build - by end of July - a complete blow-your-mind virtualization of how the Safenet works - every single but of minutia included so that my mother gets it. Hire competent people to do it and SPEND SOME MONEY getting it out to the world. ( I know the response will be “we dont have the money”. My respnse “But you will have more money if you pay some attention to areas neglected”

  4. Clearly outline using this virtualization and other marketing methods how some present day problems can be solved by the Safenet and who benefits, including Gov.

Is it that Maidsafe does not want to make certain claims now? Claims that may not be accurate until they have a working product? I think I recall something like that and I think there is a way to manage that, and besides, how many people/companies make claims they have to modify.

And can I ask why more than 3 years have passed and people still have no idea how to store a safcoin?

IMO if delivering only code is Maidsafe focus and there are no timelines, there will be many solutions availble that could possible make Maidsafe irrelevant at launch.

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The best confidence sentiment index is the price of maid and it’s market cap.
It’s the sum of sentiment of people who put real money at risk

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I’m quite confident MAID can deliver something very valuable. I’m not sure exactly what will be included on the network but I’m excited by the possibilities. I’m also not sure when they will deliver. I don’t have a lot of confidence it will go live within the next two years, but it’s possible. I’m pretty confident we will have a live network within 2-5 years.

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Yep, that’s the formula. But where are the results using this formula? Good Mediocre Bad?

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I’m reasonably happy and confident. Maid have a good team behind them.

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I’m also confident that many important technologies will be delivered by the Maidsafe team. A running network will be along soon enough. Aside from their programming genius, the three HUGE things the company got right already are (1) crowdfunding (2) utilizing social media (including newbies like myself telling people to buy MAID on twitter and gab.ai and the Poloniex Trollbox (R.I.P.)) and (3) making an ICO as the “gas” that David Irvine talks about on the Max Keiser episode. It’s a great episode btw Max Keiser got me into bitcoin mining over 5 years ago: MaidSafe on the Keiser Report - YouTube

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The main thing concerning me about bringing the Safe Network into the world is the existence of the current UK government, with it’s Investigatory Powers Bill (Snooper’s Charter). I’m expecting them to ramp up pressure against stuff like this. I’ve heard reports of them having the intention/ability to approach private companies behind the scenes and compel them to put in ‘back doors’ and such. While preventing said companies from announcing it. I’m sick of power leading to people overstepping the mark…

I wonder how quickly MaidSafe can react to legal situations and whether they could end up ducking and diving, with shenanigans such as moving to an alternative jurisdiction.

I even worry about the fact that I’ve typed certain keywords in this post. I think there’s a real chance that it’s flagging myself and this forum and this project with these undesirable sorts. Should I remove the post? See… I’m not even comfortable trying to communicate my thoughts in the public domain!

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Yes I think this is a risk too. Theresa May has always been particularly keen on forcing through this legislation in the face of advice from all sorts of technical, legal and civic experts who say that (a) it won’t work (because it’s basically a fight against maths) and (b) it will be damaging for both personal freedom and also commerce. Whatever constituency she’s serving it sure as hell ain’t us.

I was mightily cheered by her self inflicted wound. The result election might just that the government won’t be able to focus on this as much as they would like, but then again most of it will be happening behind the scenes anyway, and I’m not entirely convinced the opposition will make a difference - they raised barely an objection to the passage of the IP Bill. Anyway, hopefully we might have bought a few more months of breathing space. By the way, the Chinese government banned streaming media today. That’s the thing about authoritarians - they never give up.

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I completely understand your concerns and often find myself concerned about what I write being flagged. Not so much here, but in a country (UK) that is sliding into authoritarianism… or seemed to be until the last election.

I do not share your concerns about SAFEnetwork though. I don’t think this project can be stopped because when you try to suppress something you give it your energy, and it will overwhelm you.

The mechanisms you mention will I think be ineffective against maidsafe.

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