Since we released Alpha 1 last Friday, this Dev Update is going to be shorter than usual

We estimate that the total number of downloads for Alpha 1 (across all platforms) is about 2500-3000 so far. We are not able to see the number of downloads for Linux users who used APT or YUM, so this estimate is based on stats from previous tests and the number of GitHub downloads (currently about 2000).

The number of daily sessions on maidsafe.net was around 10X the usual number over the weekend with almost 5000 sessions on Saturday. 66% of these were new users (or had deleted their cookies) with the balance being returning users.

We are currently making tweaks to the website to improve the user experience and maximize the amount of downloads for the Alpha. Also, HTTPS is now enabled, but auto redirect from http to https is not in place yet.

Apart from the accepted RFCs for data_chains / routing_table which deal with the network modules, the development team are also finalising the client side deliverables for the next iteration. We will share our plans for the next iteration as part of the next Dev Update.

TEST 8

We will release a separate test network for users who want to try out running their own vault. It will be called TEST 8 and will be enabled on August 23.

The performance of TEST 8 will likely not be as good as the Alpha network, but the goal is just to minimally test the network until all the refactors and RFCs (disjoint groups, data chains, etc.) are implemented and tested. At this point, all things going well, we’ll revert back to running one network.

Team expansion

Recruitment is ongoing with 2 devs en route to Routing (as we mentioned last week) and several more interviews to get through for core and front end. Of course @lightyear as you all know will take up the developer outreach and front-end development role.

MaidSafe will continue to search for developer outreach managers based in different geographies as this is a key element to growing the network.

SAFE Browser RFP

We’re doing a Q&A with @joshuef tomorrow. If you have any (technical) questions about his SAFE Browser proposal, pleast post them in this topic. We will post a recording of the Q&A later this week.

Also, remember that the voting period ends in 1 week.

Here is the donation address for the SAFE Browser RFP: 14mRbLbD33RSsYuhLJ4vPr1FWzW5XHRQjG

Please only send MaidSafeCoins (MAID) to this address.

(Contributing BTC is OK, but MAID is preferred.)

For more details on the Community Engagement Program, see this topic.

Dev Forum

The Dev Forum is now up and running at forum.safedev.org. Only MaidSafe employees can register for now, because we want to take a few days to start using it and create some initial content. We will open the Dev Forum to everyone next week.