Lets nail this down. We need a solid breakdown of how SAFE works. Freenet peeps want to know

I have presented SAFE to the Freenet community for potential collaboration and cross analysis, but have been met with speculation of it’s improvements or differences over Freenet. Some have have dismissed SAFE all together. The information I provided in the IRC was deemed insufficient to properly convince them of both the need for cross analysis and the game changing nature of SAFE. I believe this community is perfectly suited to the task of detailing every aspect of SAFE’s protocol so that anyone who is curious can walk away fully informed and satisfied with the level of depth provided. A user of Freenet has for the lack of proper documentation, chosen to opt for Freenet instead if joining this great community (Though it shouldn’t be one or the other). This person has stated that Maidsafe is “Hand-waivey”. Referring to the vague nature of most answers regarding the protocol and it’s benefits over existing solutions. Please help me end this once and for all. @dyamanaka - I call upon you and your organizational skills to help compile a VERY detailed and comprehensive analysis based on community feedback including your own. Please everyone (especially boss-man @dirvine t al), help me to quell this once and for all.

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I guess it’s impossible to eliminate the “hand wavey” stuff while those details are being finalised during testing.

Surely everything else is already clear: see the wiki, and ask for anything not there - including pointers to actual working code with examples! So I’m not sure what you hope to achieve. It’s all happening now anyway, so why not let them be for a few weeks and then show them it working.

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I agree with @happybeing. It is better to let them try the SAFE Network, rather than “describe” it to them. Even the most detailed documentation falls short compared to a live experience.

Car salesmen don’t handout the car manuals to buyers. They invite the user to test drive, and let the product speak for itself.

On that note, I’ll be happy to make a video showing setup examples of the live Network. :smile:

Usually, technical questions come after the test drive. This is where we can dig down to specific details. And most of it is being finalized right now.

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Hi,
Thanks for engaging on this topic. I’m one of the people referenced by @Tonda , though I hope the relationship between the two projects is less adversarial than that post suggests.

see the wiki, and ask for anything not there

That’s roughly my problem, there’s barely anything there, and zero meat.

https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ#Difference_between_Freenet_and_Maidsafe offers no concrete distinctions, and

Some of these projects are currently trying to add components that bend them into the shape of a decentralized Internet, but this is not what they were designed for.

I don’t know what definition of “decentralized internet” is intended here, but I don’t know of any definitions that include MaidSafe but exclude Freenet, from what I know of both projects.

we don’t see any with the same goals as the SAFE Network: Privacy, Security and Freedom for everyone!

I would argue that Privacy, Security, and Freedom are all goals of Freenet.

The wiki also links to Reddit - Dive into anything which doesn’t contain any additional information, other than a link to a talk, which describes a network (imho) inconsequentially different from Freenet. I’d love if someone could show me why I’m incorrect there (I mean, that’s basically the point of the topic, show how the projects differ).

Thanks,
Dan

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Sorry for the adversarial tone. It’s just something that carried over from my convo with Arnebab on IRC yesterday. Your points are all valid. Simply using the network will not show how it all works under the hood. I too find it surprising that there is scant detail in the wiki. Seems weird that the need for that is overlooked so close to launch. Almost strategic. I’m not jumping to conclusions but this just cause for concern. Can anything be done in the near future? Maybe were just missing something obvious to the well orientated.

To build on your analogy, few buyers care primarily about ride “feel”, they care about gas mileage, towing capacity, trunk space, passenger count, perhaps when choosing between the Honda and the Toyota, the test drive may be the differentiating factor, but long before they get to that point they will have compared these other attributes and more. There’s a reason why there are nearly a million google results for “camry vs civic”, buyers care about more than just how the test drive goes.

EDIT: I may have tortured the analogy a bit, but hopefully I made my point clear.

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Welcome @Ademan and thanks for clarifying what you’re looking for. I took @Tonda’s query as being more details about SAFE. We can give you lots of details about SAFE, and the wiki is a good place to start.

You are correct the comparisons with other projects are thin - possibly because the creators of those pieces were also not that familiar with the details of Freenet. Maybe we should come over and complain that you haven’t got any decent comparisons with SAFE! :wink:

If that’s the issue, it can only be addressed to a certain depth, by someone who’s studied both projects to that depth!

We’ll be happy to help you or anyone else learn, and I’ll ask now: is there anyone who knows SAFE network well, who might like to go learn about Freenet. If so, step up!

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heeey - cool that you came here to visit us :slight_smile:

sorry … very long day and i’m just an average follower here so i’m not of much use to you :open_mouth: … :-\ … (plus i have to admit i don’t know very much about freenet … so laying out differences would be kind of challenging :smiley: )

i’m looking forward reading more about freenet and explanations about differences to MS here tomorrow :slight_smile:
have a nice evening!

ps: sorry @happybeing 2muchN00b+way2short days … I’m voting for 30h days!

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The discussion started because a SAFE user came into Freenet IRC and asked why the Freenet devs weren’t collaborating with SAFE devs. The discussion moved to how to find out more information about SAFE and the SAFE user posted this thread. So in a way, it happened like your comment suggested.

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If you haven’t done so already check out the excellent overview given on the SAFE Crossroads podcast. It’s in three parts (so far):

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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Ok so just to kick off the explanations:

SAFE is a whole new transport later for the internet, replacing http:// with safe: and it hosts all data very differently (much better!) because http looks for servers and safe splits everything into encrypted chunks and distributes them across all the connected computers, smartphones, laptops, etc across the whole world, allowing uncensorable applications and documents of all types.

…should I keep going? Is this the kinda stuff u guys want?

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I think the key difference from Freenet is that SAFE stores data permanently. There’s also a built-in incentive to store data for the network, via safecoin (which also disincentives spam).

If you haven’t seen them, I recommend the PDFs at: http://maidsafe.net/documents

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???

Everything is open source so feel free to dive right in bro.

Also the core team is all in this forum so if you want to help contribute to the codebase they’ll help get you up to speed I’m sure

This is similar to Freenet. See my post here for a quick overview. Content is split into chunks and encrypted. it is retrievable via a key. Websites can be hosted in the Freenet cloud and accessible using these keys.

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There’s also an API for developing applications, either as plugins to the Freenet system, or as seperate components. See the following for details there:

SafeCoin SafeCoin SafeCoin.

SAFE pays all users every second in SafeCoin ($0.017 current market price) for their memory and bandwidth contributions instantaneously,

As well as the developers of its apps and core network.

It provides a world-changing anonymous economy, far beyond BTC or anything possible today.

That is definitely one of the biggest pulls, for me at least.

As my friends in ATL would say…
I’m tryina get paid!

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@Ademan another thought, maybe get a couple of community members from each project together, start with some IRC maybe, but aim for a hangout - maybe @we_advance or @fergish would like to host this?

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hmmm - how does file discovery work inside freenet …? with this XOR-Routing like maidsafe or some very different algorithm …?

are ip adresses of all members in freenet known …? or are (nearly all) user addresses hidden to a single user because of the clever adressing/routing-algorithm …?

how are freenet accounts created …? are there accounts …? who maintains them …?

… aaaaaah -.-" … i’m off for now … yes some live-chat might really be beneficial …

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Yes, I’d see this as a good differentiator. In Freenet data will disappear if it’s not requested regularly. Popular data stays alive and unpopular data will go away. This prevents the total storage space allocation from getting full. How does SAFE handle this?

There is approximately 150TB of storage available to the Freenet system spread across about 10,000 nodes at the current time. Content has additional overhead to allow for recovery of data if chunks get lost so it’s not all dedicated to strict file content.

Spam is reduced in freenet in that the content would be unlikely to be retrieved and eventually disappear. Services like Sone and FMS use a “Web of Trust” system that allows users to avoid spam.

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as farmers get paid for delivering data → when available storage volume gets low farming reward goes up
… and of course when huge amounts of free storage space is there farming rewards will go down … pretty simple logic behind it :wink: