New Members: Start Here!

Hello, and welcome to the SAFE Network Forum. Whatever interest has led you here we’re happy to have you join our community! There’s some forum guidelines that you will want to familiarise yourself with. If I could encourage you to read one topic before all others it would be the Network Fundamentals.

Interested in: Just browsing the SAFE Network?

First you need to reach Trust Level 1 (Basic user) on this forum. Just read a few articles for an hour or so. You’ll get an email when you’ve achieved it.

Once you’re a Level 1 forum member go to invite.maidsafe.net and set your IP address. (This is a temporary anti-spam measure.)

After that all you need to browse SAFE Websites on the Alpha 2 network is the SAFE Browser.

You can get a step-by-step guide on how to download and install the browser from the safenetwork.tech website.

Once you have the SAFE Browser running just enter safe://hello into the address bar and you’ll see your first ever SAFE website!

There’s a List of SAFE Websites to get you started.

Interested in: Getting more involved?

In order to do more than just browse, say chat or build a website, then you are going to need an invite token to create an account on the network (this is to prevent spamming while the network is in Alpha).

Some handy links

Name Description
Getting Trust Level 1 To get an invite on to the Alpha network you need to get to Trust Level 1 (basic user). This post tells you all you need to know about getting there.
Invite server You need to register your forum account login here in order to get an invite to create an account on the alpha network. If your IP changes you’ll need to update it here too.
SAFE Browser Rather than using a plug-in for existing browsers which could have cookies, trackers and scripts the SAFE Network has it’s own custom browser. It allows you to browse safe://websites, access SAFE web apps, and authenticate other SAFE apps.
Web Hosting Manager Publish websites on your SAFE Account.
WebID Create one or more SAFE Web identities (essentially a document that acts as a placeholder for your online presence). You could have a different WebID for work, for personal use, gaming identity, whatever. Go to safe://webidmgr.dapp in your SAFE Browser
Patter The proof-of-concept, example social networking web app - it’s not Twitter! Why not put your web identity (or identities) to use! Go to safe://patter.dapp in your SAFE Browser

Interested in: Developing on, or for, the SAFE Network?

The SAFE Network is a scalable, distributed application platform, with baked-in security. It doesn’t rely on third party cloud services, and abstracts away security, encryption and user management to make building truly Decentralised Apps (D-Apps) less complex. You are free to code and build your apps faster with zero infrastructure costs.

If you are a software developer looking to create applications on the SAFE Network platform, or want to contribute to the project then you’ll want to sign-up to the Developer Forum and check out the DevHub website. There’s also a community development conversation available on Gitter.

All the core libraries are open-source, written in Rust and you’ll find them in the MaidSafe GitHub repositories.

Interested in: Safecoin/MaidSafeCoin?

Safecoin is the currency that will power the SAFE Network. It will be available to be farmed, used or traded when the Network launches. You can’t buy Safecoin yet as the Network is still in Alpha, but you can buy MaidSafeCoin.

MaidSafeCoin (MAID) is a token that was created in a crowdsale in 2014 to support the project, and each MAID will be exchanged for a Safecoin when the network launches. MAID is based on the Omni protocol (which sits on top of the Bitcoin blockchain). MAID can be purchased and traded, but not farmed.

Let us know your first impressions!

We’re always keen to hear from as many of the community members as possible, so please don’t be shy. If something isn’t as clear as you’d expect then we can fix it. Leave your feedback as a reply to this topic.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy your time on the forum whatever your main interest is.

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hey, the last time I checked you had to have an invitation to browse :wink:

edit: still does not work without invitation:

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Good point! [20 chars]

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Well hello there person interested in the SAFEnetwork for one reason or another, I hope you stick around and help make this project a popular and safe choise for all kinds of people all across the globe.

I know I will :smile:

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I’ve edited the post to reflect the requirement for Trust Level 1.

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I will do so as soon as I got the possibility to use the SAFE Browser. Until now I can’t yet :frowning:

Apologies is this is the wrong place to put this. I experienced a problem trying to use the latest version of the safe browser on a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 in a VM. After downloading, extracting, and double clicking the safe browser, nothing happened. Then I tried started from a Command Line and got the error “./safe-browser: error while loading shared libraries: libgconf-2.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”

After some searching I discovered that I needed to do the following:
“sudo apt-get install libgconf-2-4”

Maybe someone with access can update the instructions with this information.

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Hi All, new here and eager to test all the features SAFE Network is offering!

Just earned the Trust Level 1, however the requirement to provide IP leaves me uncertain.

I do not have a static IP, in fact I mostly roam at and connect from public places (as I imagine is the case with many). Would be very glad for somebody to help me understand how the initial choice of IP will influence / restrict my access to the network.

Thanks in advance and cheers!

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You can update your IP address if it changes in the same spot you set it.

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Hey @maidsafe can we fix the site here with the information above: Safe Network

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Thanks for highlighting the discrepancy. I think the web site is correct and it is the OP that needs to be fixed.

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SafeNetwork/MaidSafe is starting to mature now and, imo, needs a Public Editor whose job would be to monitor all public-facing communications (website, instructional vehicles, company-related forum posts, etc.) to ensure cohesiveness, clarity and timeliness. Whenever discrepancies or confusing/contradictory messages across the official SafeNetwork landscape are discovered they would then be called to the attention of the appropriate party for correction or updating. This will make for a more polished presentation of all things MaidSafe and lead to better first impressions of new followers.

Note: The statements above are only intended to reference official pronouncements from company representatives, not independent forum posts, reviews or commentary.

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Hey @maidsafe can we fix and this Safe Network (there is twice the same paragraph):

The process of providing resource and receiving Safecoin in return is called ‘Farming’. Each piece of encrypted network data is stored in a Farmer’s ‘Vault’, a data storage and management location on the Farmer’s computer which they cannot read, or access. The SAFE network is designed to self-manage these resources

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Hi Dimitar - good catch.
DG

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You asked for first impressions.

I’d really like the SAFE Network to work, and I know that a lot of work has gone into it… but I have to say that the apparent lack of convincing explanations of anything makes me really dubious about the project. There’s a lot of snake oil out there, and I’m not seeing much to reassure me.

Is there any real documentation? I’ve looked, at least a bit, but I can’t find any unified description of how the network is supposed to work.

By that I don’t mean generalities. I mean:

  • Unified lists of all the types of communicating entities and all the protocols they use (ideally both at “node” granularity and “intra-node” granularity).
  • Explanations of exactly what services each entity and protocol provides and consumes
  • Maybe some diagrams of that stuff: DFDs, dependency diagrams, whatever
  • Links to complete specifications of each protocol… with clear verbal summaries of the general flow AND detailed explanations of the messages and state transitions
  • Maybe a “map” of the implementing software: what libraries and applications exist, what they do, their APIs, etc. But that’s less important.

… all of it reasonably up to date.

Maybe all that exists, but to be honest I’d expect it to be linked above the fold on the front page of every site. Instead, all I can seem to find on the “tech” site is–

  • Very vague broad-brush explanations of some node roles
  • The “SAFE Network fundamentals”: a list of “it does this” claims (or perhaps project requirements) without substantiation or explanation of how. All that list does is to make me suspicious, because many of those things are really hard to actually assure… and it’s relatively easy to fool yourself into believing you’re assuring some of them. It would be a lot more reassuring if each of those had a link to a detailed explanation of how it’s achieved. Ideally with an actual proof.
  • Various fragmentary “white paper” material about bits and pieces of the system.
  • Collections of change proposals… without any unified explanation of what’s being changed.

A lack of documentation doesn’t just make it hard to learn about the project; it actively reduces my confidence in the project itself. If the sort of documentation I’m talking about really doesn’t exist, it means that the project has no coherent, central explanation of the story it’s telling itself about how it will meet its goals. So what makes me believe that the people working on it actually know?

By the way, the apparently popular “Safe Network vs Everything Else” posting shows a lot of ignorance of many of the “Everything else” items, and fails to clearly define what it means by the attributes it’s comparing. I realize that doesn’t come from the project itself, but it tends to make one suspect that the surrounding community doesn’t have a clear idea of what anything is trying to achieve, or of the various ways you might achieve such goals, which is concerning.

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Hi @jbash,
did you see here:
https://primer.safenetwork.org/

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You’re right in a certain lack of simple explanations. Unfortunately the project is extremely complex and the development of the code is a priority while the explanations, accessible to the simple user and up to date, are left for later. In a small team you have to prioritize what is considered most important.

The best way to get into the depths of the Safe Network is to read the RFCs and follow this forum and the Maidsafe’s Github. But many of the pieces of the puzzle that constitutes the network, such as Crust, Disjoint Sections, Parsec, Datachains or front-end libraries have a fairly high degree of complexity on their own.

A little patience and time is needed to understand the bases that support this ambitious project.

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I can definitely see how this might look to someone just joining the community or lurking the forum but the reality is that a lot of us come from interest in other projects and ended up sticking around for this effort because of the broad goal, the tech, the team, and/or ideals. We are not entirely dismissive of everything but we can be of some things just like you are being of this project because of lack of documentation, which is entirely understandable! In fact I agree that things are scattered and there aren’t as technical documents that tie the entire project together like other projects but I would second what @digipl posted above. This project takes a vastly different approach to a wider swath of problems than others in the space, imo. There’s definitely overlap with other projects but maybe they focus less on privacy or security, etc etc. and it’s just good if anyone succeeds to be honest.

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Hi @jbash,

Thanks for the feedback - this is the sort of first impression that will hopefully help us improve things going forward.

I’ll try to address a few of the points raised but I can’t promise to tick all the boxes. First of all… the SAFE Network code is open-source and hosted on GitHub at MaidSafe · GitHub so nothing is being hidden. However, as the SAFE Network is complex, it is modularised where possible, so there’s quite a large number of GitHub repositories to see there.

The core libraries are written in Rust and are all documented on https://docs.rs and I’ll link to a couple below.

To handle the low-level networking we developed a library optimised for peer-to-peer connections and data transportation that we call Crust(Connections in Rust).

The Client and node implementations are detailed in the Routing module:

The consensus mechanism of the SAFE Network is PARSEC. The PARSEC Whitepaper and RFC outline the consensus protocol nicely so I’d recommend that you have a read:

Developer Hub
There’s a link to API documentation and more on the Developer Hub’s Documentation Page.

I hope that’s helped in some manner, and please, if there’s anything more I can help with then please feel free to ask.

Thanks,
David.

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