It’s been about 5 years since I tried it. I guess it will never ‘die’ completely so long as someone’s running the software but it was barely usable.
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Elastos was looking good a couple of years ago and I thought it was really the one to watch but it seems they ran into some problems. I haven’t heard much about them recently, have you?
There was an impressive ten minute talk/demo of it at dWeb Summit 2018, the one MaidSafe were at. The author was asking for help dealing with the great firewall, so I reached out to him on Twitter but didn’t hear back. Recently a couple of people have said freenet has something similar to Git Portal but I haven’t looked into it.
Fair enough. It was a while ago. Maybe they brought it back to life.
Edit: Yes it does seem to have been updated. I stand corrected.
https://freenetproject.org/index.html
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I have not, but I just looked them up on twitter and they seem to be very active. Lots of activity on GitHub as well.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. As JPL noted, Tor is quite a different beast. Blockstack is included in the competitive set. Freenet is extremely old (launched 2000) and no longer seems relevant. Solid is also quite different (although potentially complementary) to the Safe Network. Inrupt’s involvement in / control over Solid development seems to have muddied the waters on that front, to be quite honest.
Yes, the argument could be made that it is dApp platform with Data Storage (rather than the other way around, which is how it appears in the analysis I conducted). Holo includes the following:
- Data Storage
- File Sharing
- Smart Contracts
- Compute
- dApp Development
- Asset Tokenization
Perhaps at some point. As JPL noted, we have to stop somewhere, and I still have a day job to attend to, haha 
This analysis has generated enough insights to provide MaidSafe with tangible action steps. I’d like to see how those insights are leveraged before expanding further. These are key takeaways that I shared with Jim, m3data, and Piluso:
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Just looking at this now. Just some notes (and I understand it is work in progress):
- Encryption is usually noted as ‘in transit’ (while being transmitted) and/or ‘at rest’ (while on storage). It may be more professional to use these terms.
- More consistent option list (kind of, not exactly, etc are a bit imprecise).
- Maybe include IPFS too and not just Filecoin? This has a browser plugin and may be more widely used than the Filecoin spin off.
Great to see this coming together!
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I just tell people its all of those put together 
Awesome, thanks! That helps. I’ll retool this to note that projects like Blockstack with E2E encryption only encrypt data in transit, whereas Safe encrypts things both at rest & in transmission.
Yes, this was more my shorthand so I could speak in more detail on the call, haha
I saw that IPFS has a browser extension (IPFS Companion) and had been included in Brave browser, but I didn’t find info on an IPFS- or Filecoin-specific browser, so I marked this as “no browser”. Should an extension that runs in a different browser be considered the same as a stand-alone browser?
I evaluated Filecoin & IPFS simultaneously b/c the protocols work in tandem. What I noticed is that one often covers weak areas of the other. Together they pose a more comprehensive solution.
Keep the comments coming! 
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If there is a browser plugin that can accomplish what a dedicated browser can, then I’d say they are just as good. Arguably, I’d say a plugin may even be better unless there is a reason why a dedicated browser is preferred. For Safe Network, the security that comes with a dedicated browser make it worthwhile though.
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Got it! Is a plug-in less secure than a standalone browser? If not, why doesn’t Safe adopt the plug-in route? It would make adoption and partnerships much easier.
I see. So, is it accurate to say that a plug-in is better than nothing but not as good as a standalone browser for security purposes?
It isn’t that the plugin is insecure in itself. Rather, it is the browser it plugs into that has various security and privacy issues. For example, a hybrid safe/http site may call out to various clear net sites, causing the user to be tracked. It may also be susceptible to cross site scripting attacks, which could potentially extract safe originating data, etc.
With a dedicated safe browser, all links opened within it are safe (in the common sense). It is a controlled, secure, private, environment. Given this is such a strong focus for safe sites, not having a dedicated browser would be like bolting the doors, but then leaving the windows open.
That said, having away to retrieve data on a standard browser may also be desirable. I suppose the market/community will figure that out in the long run.
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Plugins have been a security issue and so may not be a good route for that reason - what they can do is subject to change and the whim of Google. But in practice is not technically possible if we want to use the safe:// protocol.
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I’ll make a note that IPFS has a plug-in, but for the above reasons continue to mark IPFS as having a subpar (relative to Safe) browser solution
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Subpar in terms of security and privacy, better in terms of less friction and convenience. I’m not sure how you can address that.
I’m not sure what the goals of IPFS and other projects are, but it might be worthwhile having a column for whether they are open and clear about their values or vision (cf. Safe Fundamentals).
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Yes, the Positioning & Benefits section aims to track this.
Filecoin / IPFS market themselves with the following
-
Positioning: A decentralized storage network designed to store humanity’s most important information / A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to make the web faster, safer, and more open
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Benefits: Open market, reliability, traceability / efficient, data permanence, open market, reliability
Does security trump convenience if your goal is “to store humanity’s most important information” and to “make the web faster, safer, and more open”? Could be argued both ways, but I’d lean towards security taking precedence. When it comes to browser implementation, I’ll consider Filecoin/IPFS “yellow” on the green, yellow, red scale.
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Great to see this initiative, congrats and looking forward to the final version!
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Would it make sense to include a section on secure transactions and their competitors? I see this as a huge leg up for the network, as near instantaneous, secure, and cheap transactions is something all blockchain based products have been striving for and none have achieved. Monero, XRP, ZCash, even BTC, etc.
This may have more immediate use than any of the other features, and could be a driving force to bringing people to the network.
I agree with this, especially if fees are really going to be lower than other cryptos because last time I tried to use it Ethereum was pretty much entirely useless for its main purposes because of high fees and BTC fees aren’t exactly negligible so this has got to be on people’s minds.
Also if the competition analysis suggests sticking to targeting crypto users at first, this has got to be one of the things to mention as they are definitely going to be interested in the safe coin aspect itself as well as the broader network.
I thought about this, but due to regulatory concerns (security vs. utility token) & the harsh treatment privacy coins have received of late (de-listings), I decided it might be best to avoid dipping into that framing (for now at least).
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