In his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace John Perry Barlow wrote, “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind.”

“On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” Yet today, the Internet is highly centralized and under the thumb of few governments and corporations. USA Today cited the research firm Forrester as saying that Amazon alone controls 42 percent of the cloud market by revenue.

Then there is the absurd fact that 70 percent of the world’s web traffic flows through one county (Loudoun) in Virginia, United States. Now Substratum is bringing an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to gather funds so that they can change this scenario.

They claim that they can ‘revolutionize’ the hosting industry using Blockchain technology and artificial intelligence.

Why the Substratum ICO is important?

Substratum is raising funds for their decentralized hosting services, the ICO began on Aug. 14, 2017 and will end on Sept. 14, 2017. Their goal is to make their presence felt on every computer in the next decade.

The Token that will be issued during the ICO is called SUB and a total of 6 mln such tokens would be issued. The minimum subscription amount is 500 SUB or 0.1 ETH. The total sale goal is 150,000 ETH.

A Substratum spokesperson told us that several factors make their coin profitable. Substratum cited the presence of privacy, security and encryption Blockchain, decentralized storage and service of content, decentralized DNS, development tools (API/SDK) for the decentralized web, net neutrality and a revolutionary way of management of hosting costs and multiple revenue streams.

SUB coin will facilitate hosting while gathering value

The token that will be released through the ICO will go a long way in facilitating decentralized hosting. We were told that network members who run the Substratum broadcast software will receive SUB coins by serving requests. There is a hope that this will increase global participation and add value to the coin.

Citing TechCrunch, Substratum tells us:

“Businesses or Entities that wish to host sites, databases and applications on the Substratum Network will use SUB coin to pay the Network Members through a series of microtransactions for the requests that those members serve up. This will mean SUB becomes the currency of the decentralized web which nearly every tech source agrees is the future of the Internet.”

Substratum summarizes that “Through all these microtransactions there will be very small fees that will accumulate value to the Substratum Coin and add equity to investors portfolios as they trade on the major exchanges.”

How will the project progress post ICO?

According to a white paper released by Substratum, they plan to focus highly on product awareness and development, which will get 30 and 60 percent of the total budget respectively.

Up to 10 percent of the budget has been earmarked for network infrastructure. We were told that in the coming four months their focus would be on cryptography and compression.

Substratum tells us:

“Everything on a node will be fully encrypted so even the node cannot see what they are actually hosting. The content is completely secure.”

There are also plans to have a payment gateway called Cryptopay on board. Substrate will be used as a conversion currency in this multi currency payment system.

Substratum thus has multiple revenue streams as they have integrated their coin into their hosting, nodes as well as payment gateway systems.

Decentralized Web can build a freer Internet

The current state of the Internet is ripe for reform. We have countries like China and Vietnam and other parts of the world which are behind great firewalls and subject to immense censorship.

We have mega corporations that control Internet traffic. We have intelligence agencies that snoop and pry on people’s private data. A decentralized Internet promises to bring change and reform to this scenario.

As the Substratum spokesperson remarks about the proposed network and the purpose of building it:

“Yes, that is the purpose, we will bring the entire world the free and secure Internet.”

Finally, Cointelegraph readers can also benefit by participation as Substratum reveal a special offer:

“The ICO runs for another two weeks, there are bonuses available with referral codes (people could use COINTELEGRAPH) for a code to receive 15% extra. We have raised nearly $4 mln well over our minimum goal.”

You can find more out about Substratum at https://substratum.net.