Yay, yes please this is what we need. 
I think this is a boggling question (to me at least) so we should be particularly open to all questions and ideas. Although I hope we do that anyway here.
I understand the thought about setting core things in stone, and how we set these core criteria at all is my first question. For example: how do you measure ‘in perpetuity’?!
But on the setting in stone point I’m wary. I think we shouldn’t set an AI on a path with no possible way to change it later, a different tougher process yes, but not set in stone forever. Everything changes eventually, even a constitution.
2 Likes
Perpetuity: This is a great point. A target to span human civilizations would be great, but this seems out of scope; a whole other kind of problem. If we had a good long term storage medium, then we could consider how to use it with safenet.
This point also reminded me how terribly fragile and short-lived most human-made systems tend to be, especially involving software. Considering this I should be more than happy with a perpetuity equal one human lifetime.
Then I worry about the longevity of the economics that is supposed to make people maintain nodes, and second about technical progress; a single major invention in storage or communication could force everyone back to the drawing table to start over.
So, for now, we might be talking of perpetuity of no more than a decade or two? In that case, simply letting Maidsafe decide with user input, might be just fine. Stage 1. I got it. We can worry about decentralisation later, after launch, correct?
Edit: Durations to measure SAFE Network’s perpetuity against:
Civilization - 336 years - Minimum for preservation of knowledge
Lifetime - 89 years - My kids would have to worry, not I
Generation - 31 years - Would have to worry about my data
OS Life cycle - 10 years - Better keep main storage on-premise
1 Like
Dear David - just wanted to share that Microsoft just announced they are building their Decentralized identity on the bitcoin blockchain. However, they are working with standards set by W3C. SAFE can have its own ID but it is critical that is built around w3C standards as well. This will become critical for adoption. How cool would it be if DID created on Bitcoin (on w3C standards) works on SAFE network as well. and/or vice - versa. We want to make this easy for a user. We can keep the principles of security that SAFE lives by but also have interoperability with noted standards like W3C. Bigs firms will be working on making DID adoption easy and SAFE can ride that wave too in a positive way. Let me know your thoughts. Dont want SAFE to be sitting alone with its own standards and waiting for the world to come to it. Interoperability with w3C standard should be a must, I think : )
2 Likes
Yes I had read about these moves and upcoming standards. I like standards where possible, but only when applicable. Blockchain standards would be good, but I am not sure right now. The industry is moving fast and some really new tech (dgk, snarks etc.) and standard bodies don’t move that fast. So yes we need to be very aware of these, but we also need to launch quickly and we have something a bit different to blockchains. Lets watch this space though for sure.
7 Likes
Thanks David. There are quite a few companies coming up - all working on DID based on standards set by W3C. One is actually is Cambridge blockchain start-up. I think there mission summarizes it the best path forward (similar to SAFE) - “We envision a future where users have a lot more direct control over their personal data, and we also believe in open, interoperable networks”. I think interoperable is the key here. I think if SAFE IDs are developed based on W3C and/or provide interoperability with W3C standards based DIDs, I think a lot of other solutions/systems may also end up using SAFE network. Again like you said, without compromising on security and some of the other features for SAFE.
1 Like