New to the forum with a few questions

I am blown away by this project. To think it was in development prior to Satoshi’s whitepaper. IMO the SAFE network isn’t getting the credit it deserves. As an aside i found out about the SAFE network by searching for decentralized storage with the thought a decentralized internet could exist. Mainly i was let down by blockstack using “cloud” (centralized) storage and though there has to be a better way and then i found this!!! My lord, it’s the silver bullet, predating all others like blockstack, filecoin, storj, sia and even bitcoin for that matter. When i read comparisons between SAFE and others i always hear the same response, safe is overly ambitious. With that i have a few questions.

How is accessing public pages and consuming data free?

Does the SAFE network allow decentralization without a traditional blockchain? Is this what the SAFE network is?

Are safe coins only really necessary for end users who don’t contribute via farming or apps?

If i wanted to create an app with significant data how could i get it off the ground without enough safecoin?

Im pretty excited about developing my own app. Am i limited to Rust or are there other languages?

Finally, what are the current gotchas? I know im asking this amongst those who might be bias but i want to know what the most educated group feels about this projects short comings.

I read a good deal of the wiki so plz be gentle if i missed something obvious

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Yes, and this video explains a bit of how the SAFE network reaches consensus without a blockchain.

Hope this helps with one of your questions , and welcome to the forum.

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I’ve not seen that video before, but I like the format. I dunno how I missed them…

@nicklambert, it would be great to get these refreshed, nicely scripted, polished, maybe graphics added, then linked to an FAQ section of the website. These are the sort of golden nuggets that should be easily found.

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I agree. I think all the questions are invaluable with David’s answers but I would suggest re-recording with better audio. A fireside chat with David Irvine! Only kidding on the last part :wink:

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I believe Bugs Bunny (banned member) made a thread about this particular subject. He written it all out while listening to the videos, and audio. He was a great contributor to this community.

There is a topic about this. Some personally believe it is not feasible. However, we must put this into the test, and see how it can perform.

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Blockchain is so inefficient and such a dinosaur. It feels awful when people speak of it as latest innovative technology. It’s literally a waste of space, CPU power and everyone’s time. Would be good to see a detailed response to OP’s post!

:slightly_smiling_face:

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Glad you found the SAFE network and that you’ve seen its potential.

The biggest ‘gotcha’ right now is that the network is unproven to work in its final form, as it’s not quite there yet. Many of the important parts have been shown to work in previous tests & the current Alpha 2. Getting the whole thing stable & resilient in Alpha 4 will probably be a real ‘make or break’ time for the network. The network won’t progress without resilience (which was missing in previous ‘vaults from home’ tests), but with it, it can have a huge impact on the world.

The biggest threats I imagine include getting the economics wrong (supply & demand of resources & incentivisation). With some trial & error plus early stage tweaking, this should be sufficiently adjustable to quickly be fixed if needed.

Another ‘gotcha’ could be latency for some applications. The response from the network is unlikely to be as fast as from direct connections to a server. For low-latency applications, perhaps some kind of temporary anonymous direct P2P links could be initiated between SAFE connected applications.

One more challenge is the requirement for near perfection. If the network somehow messes up stored data through a future bug that replicates its self through all stored versions, it could be catastrophic for trust in the network. Due to this, I wonder if it could be useful to have a native but independently stored blockchain for hashes of critical data or balances from the network to be stored in for complete fail-safe in the unlikely event of network failure.

I’m no programmer, and I’m sure these issues can fairly easily be overcome for specific applications where required. I think SAFE will become by a long way the biggest ‘crypto’ project out there if it is functional fairly quickly, because it reaches far beyond the current crop of crypto projects.

The scope of the SAFE network’s potential impact is incredible… it’s fantastic to be close to a project that’s most popular critique is that it’s too ambitious :smiley:

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For many purposes SAFE may superceed blockchain, but currently Blockchain is the only way to get distributed digital scarcity, so it’s certainly not a waste of time. Until something better comes along, Blockchain is playing an important & revolutionary role.

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Woah! If this is truly implemented then it means that the Safe network organizes storage closest to where it will be consumed.

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My thoughts here:

The coin seems only valuable to those who plan to consume more than they are willing to share. I don’t think giving up hard drive space for browsing privileges is all that much to ask. Any consumption of public content should be balanced by the use of storage on the device visiting the content. This seems to me one of the overarching premises for the entire SAFE Network.

Basically, public content is never free in this way as I believe it shouldn’t be. Any consumption should be coupled with equal distribution and when that balance isn’t met then you pay safe coin.

Why then would we even desire to make a claim regarding free public consumption? Is there an idea that an abundance of distribution will be available such that public content browsing will just exist?.. Lord knows someone will game it or at least test this in its infancy and claim FUD.

On the other hand what use-cases exist if any that require free public browsing? If so, why should these use-cases even be considered?

Agreed, I’m glad he was being diplomatic though. Fact is you’d upset your main user-base if you were to out right say the blockchain isn’t that great.

TBH, I think the major learning for me is that the blockchain as Satoshi created it solved a strict decentralized currency problem, albeit a bit heavy handed and far from perfect.

For a decentralized internet the blockchain isn’t a good fit since the devices participating should have the ability to provide their work to complement their usage. A currency in theory is only needed when the give and take is imbalanced. This; to me, seems harmonious hence me being attracted to this project.

As far as blockchain goes I too am pretty much sick of the hype. The most interesting decentralized solutions these days don’t seem to be blockchain based. Unfortunately most new projects have to compare themselves to blockchains for fear of being ignored due to blockchain popularity.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Discussions on a member/moderation arising from a topic

Sorry guys, I am being heavy handed here as the forum guidelines say moderation talk is for he Meta category. You can continue the discussion there.

I have a much bigger marketing system proposal that I’m going to explain to @MaidSafe :slight_smile:

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I found the subject. It wasn’t Tonda. It was @Audity who did this.

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Jusr reading my reply, sorry if it came over rushed, i was going out & only had a minute, but knew you all would enjoy the video and also knew someone else on the forum would likely fill in the blanks, and they did :smiley:

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Hello and welcome to the forum !

Short answer :

There are many languages you could write an application with. Node / javascript is the only one that is well documented so far.

Long answer :

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This isn’t true. It is stored at the closest location in XOR space yes, but that means it is distributed randomly geographically.

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Did I hear an angle grinder in the background?

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