What are the threats/competition to this project?

Assuming the team stays the course and the project doesn’t get uprooted by some government intervention, what are some possible cases in which the project fails?

I’m wondering if there are some other projects out there… maybe more shitty but will gain first mover advantage… or if some race condition occurs after launch and ruins everything… or if the entire crypto market will die due to hype/fomo capping out

:thinking:

With the progress on Fleming I am tempted to invest.

Thx

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At this stage the investment options are limited to buying shares in the special company that holds a small amount of Maidsafe shares. The only way to do that is if one of the holders of those shares sells to you.

But I suspect you mean buying MAID tokens. MAID (or eMAID) tokens are the tokens to be exchanged for SNT (Safe Network tokens). While an investment for yourself this is not investing in the development or Maidsafe company.

Thought I’d clear that up in case there was any confusion.

As to competitors, there are a couple out there doing slightly similar which I will let others who know a lot more about them tell you about them. (Like @Dimitar, @happybeing )

The main differences with these involve the way they store the files/data, levels of encryption, and length of time for storing on payment.

The Safe network is not dependent on the crypto market once it is launched since the SNT lives on the network and transferred using DBCs. SNT is not a crypto coin requiring miners etc. It is more akin to digital cash in its concept and by using DBCs the transfer is handled entirely on the network, with some ability to transfer off net.

Where the project can be impacted by a “collapse” of the crypto space is in future funding since the Maidsafe company holds some (or most?) of its future funding in BTC and MAID. Mind you this does not mean the project is dead since it is only one source of future funding.

A major point is that this project is not a crypto project even though it has some aspects that interest people from the crypto market and its (e)MAID token is held on the blockchain. Also that people will most likely be buying/selling/trading SNT via crypto exchanges even though its not a blockchain or crypto token as such.

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One point I will make is that this project is not a moon project initially.

The goal is to have as low cost for puts (uploads) that it would be viable for anyone to use Safe network.

That said, if the Safe network is valuable for its features like anonymity, low cost for storing a file forever one time fee, and anti-censorship then I reckon the SNT would be growing in value slowly and steadily as more people use it for their uploads.

one side-effect of anti-censorship is that it will be actively bombarded by individuals, enterprices and governments with anti-crime, anti-pedophile, anti-hate speech reasons So people might assosiate Safe Network as a bad thing and being a pay to upload and new in its implementation it might get put aside by the average joe.

the average joe though will jump in once he understands that anything he uplaods stays for ever and cost a fractions of other solutions. There goes advertising,marketing and personal promotion from average joe to average joe.

So tl;dr:

what I wanna summarise is that it will take long time till this project gets to a point where your investment will give fruit.

and there is a problem of bad actors standing against freedom/encryption/privacy etc.

my view on it is that money you invest in omni-MAID or eMAID will not get to waste when you will be in a retirement scenario! what I am saying simply is that this is gonna be a huge thing in the future. But a successful final Safe Network takes time to make it do what it is promised.

p.s.

I remember years ago that we got a testnet and a desktop/mobile browser and APIs and wallets and authentication and everyone was so pumped that this is coming close to being releases. But we are here now with another testnet implementation that week by week is getting better or worse as we add the missing pieces!

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Jim here, Strategy Officer for MaidSafe…

We are more proactive on things like this than you might assume. It’s also worth remembering that we are building the Network to serve humanity, and governments need security and integrity of data as much as anyone else.

I’m of the opinion that there aren’t really any competitors. Not that there aren’t teams and projects out there trying to solve the same puzzle, but more that it’s wrong to think of them as competition, more allies, especially in such as nascent domain with so few existing solutions. More solutions: more choice, more reach, bigger pie, more floating boats.

We are not primarily a crypto project, we are a communications project; so in terms of it affecting the overall aims/direction of the project, I wouldn’t worry.

We’ve been at this longer than Bitcoin has been around, so we’ve seen every price in the spectrum and worked through it. So we are as practiced as anyone when it comes to working through the lumps and bumps.



My overriding comment would be this though: whatever you dedicate your time, attention, and resources too—money or otherwise—let it reflect your values. I think that's how you can get the most satisfaction and ROI, ultimately.

So here’s a reminder or our objectives, so you can see if they align:

  1. To Allow anyone to have unrestricted access to public data: all of humanity’s information, available to all of humanity.
  2. Enable people to securely, and privately access their own data, and use it to get things done, with no one else involved.
  3. Allow individuals to freely communicate with each other privately, and securely.
  4. Giving people and businesses the opportunity for financial stability by trading their resources, products, content, and creativity without the need for middlemen, or gatekeepers.

Hope that helps.

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Storj - Launched in 2018, does cloud storage only.

ShiftNRG - Decided to freeze all development the moment I started putting money into their ERC20 coin.

Substratum - Dead as well.

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The internet computer

https://smartcontracts.org/docs/developers-guide/concepts/what-is-ic

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Exactly this! :point_up:

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GNUnet The GNUnet is the most similar project I’ve found, in the sense that they also seem to be interested primarily in empowering people by providing privacy, security and freedom for the user.

It’s non-blockchain, also very much a research project, with most development happening in Universities. Has been around for a bit. I don’t see it as being a competitor though, the goals are too aligned for that to make any sense.

One could maybe say that Safe’s approach to solving this problem is more simple and monolithic, which ultimately could be a lot smoother for users. Again, the projects are only complimentary.

https://solidproject.org/ @happybeing is the resident expert here, but Solid is another complimentary decentralisation project. I believe at some stage there has been communication between the Solid and Safe teams about making things work together, which presumably will pick up again sometime soonish as the Safe Network pushes closer to its birth.

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From the GNUnet page:

“Please be aware that this project is still in an early alpha stage when it comes to running software – its not an easy task to rewrite the whole Internet!

Well said, even though there is a small spelling error above…

But they already have binaries in the Debian repositories!

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