Someone’s out there making the Web safe for all of us. And, serverless too! UK-based startup MaidSafe is being developed as a “distributed platform”, likely to be ready by the end of 2014. When it does, the Internet can become server independent, to be replaced by a private & secure network that no 3rd party will be able to intercept, copy, steal or sell.
MaidSafe will serve as a P2P applications network that will make use of the computing & storage resources of the network’s own users. SAFE stands for Secure Access For Everyone network, while MAID is for Massive Array Of Internet Disks. That explains the concept in a techno-nutshell, but this is not just a new-flanged bit torrent type P2P network for distributed file sharing, either.
MaidSafe has far grander plans – it hopes that it can do away with the entire server-centric Internet itself. So what will the server be replaced with? Well, the team behind MaidSafe explains, the idea is to replace it with hard disks on individual computers.
At any given time, the MaidSafe P2P network will maintain at least four copies of every chunk of data. This ensures that if a user shuts down the computer or gets disconnected, the chunks of data held at that time by the user’s disk won’t be lost.
Basically, for the layman, what these chaps are doing is re-configuring the present architecture of the Web in such a way that the new system will safeguard every surfer’s privacy, among other benefits.
They’ve been testing the network itself without any applications riding on it, but the applications are the key to the network’s success. Consider this – you’d be able to host your applications on the Safe network without any hosting provider – no need to sign up with AWS or Rackspace or any other provider & pay for it every month &/or for usage of cloud-based resources.
Another key aspect that enhances MaidSafe’s chances of gaining a large user base is that they are incentivizing the usage of a user’s disk space. Just as Bitcoin mining creates new Bitcoins, allowing the Safe network to use your disk space will earn you Safecoin.
This cryptocurrency will also enable developers to monetize their apps on the network.
The client applications used to access the network will be using self-encrypting data (see video) & self-authentication. Clients will be able to access every service available today on the Internet, & many others that are not possible on the centralized system used by the Internet.
The Troon, Scotland-based MaidSafe.net Limited was founded in Feb 2006 by David Irvine, & Project SAFE was co-founded by Irvine & Nick Lambert. Irvine is MaidSafe’s CEO & Lambert the COO. Maidsafe has raised $6 million through equity crowdfunding (as in sale of Safecoins). While the guys were at work on the project since 2006, it was earlier this year that MaidSafe came out stealth.
So, are Google, Apple & Yahoo listening?
Image Credit: MaidSafe
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