Signal Flare from a Milestone

As we all anticipate, patiently or impatiently, the full release of the SAFE Network implementation, it’s easy to overlook a few things of which the technology is capable RIGHT NOW. These are milestones which have slipped by without massive celebration because they are not the fulfillment of the whole dream.

Yet these milestones are hugely significant. In fact, they are so significant that MaidSafe could have a multibillion dollar valuation right now, if David and the team were willing to just develop a product something short of the complete vision of Privacy, Security and Freedom for Everyone.

Think for a moment about what we have functioning right now. There is a vault network running on data center machines. What 100 vaults? There is still to finish the implementation to deal with the wild, wild world of complete unbridled peer-to-peer, where some people will be trying to connect monster vaults and others will be trying to use low-spec smart phones. (That last is not an easy problem, though I have every confidence that it will be in place in fairly short order.)

But say that MaidSafe wanted to “go to market” as a proprietary system and run a network which could be accessed by anyone, be private and secure, without backdoors. Do you think they could make some money charging people for storing data and communicating via that network? Do you think they could make a billion dollars licensing the technology to a more closed market?

The impact of where we are at started to surface after I participated in what I think is an historic accomplishment, which it turns out wasn’t as unique as I thought. @19eddyjohn75 appreciated my podcasting and promotional efforts for the community, and decided to send me some bitcoin. That’s not unusual. He’s been my most generous donor. What was different is that he paid me via the SAFE Network, an action which is significant. How did he do it? Using the Tutorial Mail App, he sent me the PRIVATE KEY to a bitcoin address containing what he wanted me to have.

To have done this via regular email would have been somewhat unthinkable. Encrypting it would have made the transaction workable over email, but we’d have to have exchanged keys, etc. Complicated.

Instead, he just entered the key as part of his message and sent it. That’s how secure the system is inherently. Of course, this is a Test Network, so all disclaimers apply. But he trusted it because he understood that NO ONE ELSE could intercept it, or even know that he had communicated to me.

My thanks to @neo for his insights that helped bring home the significance of that with this post.

Of course, such communications had already been occurring since the first test nets, just not with money involved, as far as I know. The point is that there is no way I or anyone else COULD know, unless they participated or found out from a participant. (Again test network disclaimers apply.)

So, as much as I would like to make a big deal out of how I took part in the first passage of monetary value over as SAFE Network implementation, that’s not the point that we should be appreciating.

What we should take away is the David Irvine could have taken his genius visions of this technology and made a billion dollars on just the component breakthroughs he’s made to accomplish the whole. At any of a number of points, he could have pivoted MaidSafe to be a proprietary technology company and licensed various aspects for literally billions, enriching himself and his early investors handsomely. Instead he’s keep to the vision of Secure Access For Everyone, with Privacy, Security and Freedom as the default.

He’s amassed a team and a growing community to share in the bigger vision. So I can comfortably say that WE are changing the world here. And very shortly the broader world will start to see that which many of us here on the forum have seen for some time. The world will change in ways that it is hard to grasp.

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Awesome! the exchange of bitcoin over safemail. This is one very attractive feature that will go a long way attrcting bitcoin users to the safenetwork…

Im confused by these claims that David could have already made billions. Not suggesting its not true but would like to see how this could have been accomplished or was there some backroom discussions never made public?

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I think what @fergish is saying is that this system could have been created as a proprietary system and sold as a service to businesses, etc with the Maidsafe company (or David) keeping all the profits. Instead, he chose to keep it open source and share the tech with the world…

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I am sure that others will come up with additional ideas but here’s one. Imagine MaidSafe did not go with the broad open license on this technology. Imagine that the vault structure were used by data-center companies and massive private database companies to manage their data.

That’s network wide deduplication, storage, multiple copy maintenance and self healing. This is, in fact, something that MaidSafe will be licensing, I’m sure. That alone would be enough to make all investors very very well rewarded right now.

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True, but it’s even bigger than that. Think on it a bit. Maidsafe will ALSO make billions on licensing. But in the meantime will be setting a huge portion of mankind free.

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Oh I hear you there for sure, just didnt want to get too into the weeds on it all. :slight_smile:

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I would calm down a bit and not make such sweeping statements. We hope it will happen one day, but nothing yet has demonstrated that it will.

The easy aspect is making the system work in theory. The hard part is making it work while nodes are in the hands of attackers. No-one doubts the first scenario, most people doubt the second.

We are still waiting for the first test net that works in the wild. This means we are still in pre-alpha.

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True. Perhaps I suffer from irrational exuberance. But I do believe. What I am saying is that even if it cannot work in the wild (which I’m sure it will be made to) it still has the capability of doing tremendous good just to the level it has been developed.

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Exciting isn’t it? :slight_smile:

Anyone who is familiar with how much it costs to provide secure and scalable infrastructure will understand how a lot of this technology will be powerful. Even more so when you understand how sharing data between virtualise environments is important and migrating said VMs to different physical locations.

Moreover, containerisation is upon us and this puts further pressure on the storage infrastructure. With all containers and VMs needing to be able to boot from anywhere and immediately access data from other partner nodes.

Today’s answer is SAN. Tomorrow’s answer could be SafeNet or a closed, licensed maidsafe network. A secure, scalable, self-healing network storage solution could provide just the ticket.

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Yes I read that and wondered about the claims of $billions that could have been already realized. There is no way to substantiate those claims and I cannot see where those conclusions could be drawn. I think its valuable to have confidence in the team and I continue to support them but the real value of Maidsafe has yet to be determined.

“Billions” is more of a rhetorical exaggeration. The real point is that SAFE is not being built to make a buck. Making many bucks will just be a sign of having achieved the noble purpose.

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That doesnt square with the Bttf theme. But I agree with you that David has noble intentions. In order to be a philanthropist you must have been a capitalist pig in a previous life.

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Yeah.

If making money were a primary purpose, things would have been done very differently.

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Maidsafe needs money to deliver its vision and without money it will not be anything other than a historical event. Like it or not, right now and for the foreseeable future, Maidsafes sole purpose is to demonstrate it can bring value to investors - past, present and future - and if it fails to do that, it fails completely. Making money IS its primary purpose. Money will allow Maidsafe to deliver the Safenetwork and do the many things that are important to its founders.

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There is much in what you said @fergish. This SAFEforrest is now a lot more than a few seedlings, but a lot of trees, many immature and one day this forest will rival the current internet.

email was one of the major events that occurred in the development of the old internet. One of the pillars that enticed so many people to use the internet and later the web. Now we just redeveloped it and made it more personal, more private, more secure. And did it as a DEMO application. As you say even IF the vaults had to be in datacentres and verified by by some system/authority, this (after fixing bugs blah blah) network would change the world once APPs appear.

Yet this is just the start, imagine what will come of this once the network is fully realised.

Perhaps having our eyes so focused on the end game we missed this stage of development being a pivotal point in SAFE’s development. We have something that could be taken, massaged/bug fixed/APPs built, and marketed as a product. Albeit an massively inferior product, but one that could still change the world when the APPs built for it.

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I think we are on the same page but that you are saying it backwards. Making money is absolutely necessary to accomplish the purpose but need not be a purpose in its own right.

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Nicely put and I completely agree. I see extrinsic vs intrinsic motivations with the former being predominant. Hence my view.

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