There is a blockchain platform that has taken upon itself the responsibility to save the planet from the perils of centralized data storage and to revolutionize the data storage as we know it. The MaidSafe platform has the aim to provide security and privacy to everyone on the planet. Talk about ambitious. While you may think they are slightly over reaching, it seems they are armed with just the right tools to achieve their mission.

The Safe Network

The Scotland based company started developing the Safe Network back in 2006. The team behind MaidSafe will materialize their vision through this network. It is a network made up of the extra hard disk space, power processing, and data connectivity of its users. It is a sharing economy of sorts, but for digital resources.

The Safe Network hopes to combine the features of pre-existing famous decentralized networks and thus it is inspired by the likes of Napster, Freenet, BitTorrent and Bitcoin.

Features provided by the Safe Network

Fully encrypted data storage and file sharing

Ability to use the network anonymously

Censorship resistant communication

Server-less data

Scalable cryptocurrency free from transaction fees

The MaidSafeCoin

The MaidSafeCoin serves as the decentralized currency for the decentralized network. Which automatically means that it will serve as the currency for the Safe Network.

How does the Safe Network function?

It is crystal clear that the Safe Network ultimately wants to create a secure, autonomous, data-centric, peer-to-peer network as an alternative to the current server-centric model.

The Safe Network will comprise of two main users, the clients and the farmers. The former a secure, autonomous, data-centric, peer-to-peer network as an alternative to the current server-centric model, while the later store and look after your data until it’s needed, at which point they might receive a reward for their efforts.

The Safe Network is basically an encrypted layer that sits on top of the current Internet, allowing for autonomous data storage and networking by replacing three of the OSI networking layers.

How does data move on the Safe Network?

When a file is uploaded to the network, such as a photo, it will go through three things; broken into pieces, hashed, and lastly, encrypted. Then, the data is randomly distributed across the network. Surplus copies of the data are created as well, just in case if someone storing the file turns their computer off, you will still have access to your data. And even with pieces of your data on other people’s computers, it will be unreadable to them, thus making the Safe Network, well.. safe.

Furthermore, the network automatically creates more copies of any piece of data that is in high demand amongst the public. Hence more popular websites would be allocated more copies of their data and actually speed up, instead of slowing down under the existing system.

Where is the data stored on the decentralized platform?

It is a very valid question, since MaidSafe goes completely against the traditional concept of centralized data. Ironically so, vaults, is the answer to this question. The vault software connects you to the Safe Network and saves the distributed pieces of data on your computer.

The SafeCoins

You must be wondering, where do SafeCoins come in the picture? The current token for the Safe Network is the “MaidSafeCoin”, a proxy that was released during its crowdsale. Once the network is launched, they will be exchanged for Safecoins on a 1:1 basis.

When someone wants access to a piece of data on the Safe Network, such as a website or a file, much like the process of mining, here the farmers will compete to find the relevant pieces of data and deliver them to the client. The first farmer to deliver the goods will have a chance to earn some Safecoin.

Benefits of MaidSafe

MaidSafe provides a data storage that is fully encrypted, plus a file sharing network that is decentralized, reliable and efficient. A user has the luxury to use the network anonymously, which further boosts the security. It provides quicker data transit because its distributed network works on the server-less data concept. The MaidSafe network further uses a scalable cryptocurrency, free from any kind of transaction fees.

The Team

MaidSafe takes pride in its small team that consists of thinkers, inventors, tinkerers, and engineers.

You can read the whitepaper here.