Photo source: My own edit of a Mainframe design.

In this article I’m going to discuss privacy, censorship, and the blockchain startup fighting for your freedom. But first let’s address something. This post is in no way any financial advice and you should always do your own research. This is merely my own opinion on a subject. And secondly, I am not a professional writer. I am just a blockchain enthusiast writing about subjects that interest me and I try my best to share that with everybody and to raise awareness about a blockchain startup. So let’s start by discussing censorship a little bit.

Why we should fight censorship?

Governments went from spectators in the digital revolution to sophisticated early adopters of advanced technologies that allowed them to monitor journalists, and direct the flow of information. -TheAtlantic.

In 2014, audio recordings indicating corruption within Turkey’s government started to appear all across twitter. The tapings indicated that the then prime minister were to some degree involved in corruption, which led the prime-minister to ban twitter for the whole country for 2 weeks. That was not a one time offence by the Turkish government, the same happened in 2015 when twitter was banned again. In 2009 when the Iranian people started to organize protests against their government. As a result Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube were banned. In 2009, China blocked the same websites for the same reason. In Vietnam, Facebook has been blocked since 2009. In North Korea, the government won’t allow most of their citizens to access the internet. In Nazi-Germany, the government used censorship to eliminate all negative views on Nazi beliefs.

That is just some of the cases where governments all around the world try to silence their citizens when they rise to criticize their government. They try to cut off citizens communication with each other, and with the outside world. From the outside world, we don’t know what’s happening inside those countries where censorship of social media is exercised. We don’t know what kind of atrocities is committed, We don’t know what international laws are broken. We are kept out in the dark, the citizens of those countries are kept in the dark. History has shown us how bad the things can become once censorship is used.

At any time given, about 2/3 of the worlds citizens live under some kind of government censorship of the internet. -Freedom House, a pro-democracy think tank.

This is why we must fight censorship, We shouldn’t allow people’s voices to be silenced. We shouldn’t allow anyone to lose their right to freedom. We can’t allow governments, corporations, or any individuals to exercise any kind of censorship over people. The blockchain startup we are going to talk about a bit down this article fights censorship, and lets you keep the right to your privacy. So let’s now talk a bit about that.

Why privacy matters?

This has been a hot discussion subject since the rise of the internet. This is the era of the internet, and we are online all the time. Either on our computers or on our phones. Our cars, our fridges, our toys, our washing machines, (and so many other items) are all connected to the web. Every second, 6000 tweets are tweeted, 40000 google searches are made, and more than 2 million emails are sent. There is constant stream of data traveling through the internet. Millions and billions byte of data are sent every second, every minute, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

In all that data is our own private data. Each person’s footprint is on the internet. A lot of information about you are either stored in your computer, traveling through the web, or is stored in a server half across the world.

All the websites you visit, all the social-media you use, tracks and stores information about you. Some handle that data carefully, responsibly, and with respect to you as consumer. But some don’t to that at all. The internet is full of people wanting access to your private data, for different reasons. But all those reasons, in the end, is all about profits and power. And we all know what can happen when your private data gets in the wrong hands.

We have a responsibility to protect your data. If we can’t, we dont’ deserve it. -Mark Zuckerberg.

One of the most recent controversies where your data got into the wrong hands is the Facebook and Cambridge analytica scandal (For you that don’t know about it, please read about it here). But for a short summary; Facebook allowed the personal and private data of 87 million Facebook users to be accessed by a company called Cambridge Analytica. The data was used to influence and manipulate voter opinions. This is a perfect case on why privacy matters and we should do more to protect it. Corporates loves to profit on your private data, and many individuals, corporates, or even governments would love to get their hands on your information and use it to their advantage against you. This is the big business of user data. And this is why we need more people getting involved in fighting this kind of immoral misuse of private user data. And this is where our blockchain startup comes into the picture. The company in questions is Mainframe. They aim to fight censorship and help you protect your privacy. So let’s get into how they plan on doing it.

What and who is mainframe?

Photo source: Mainframe.com

Mainframe provides unprecedented communications security without compromising convenience. -Mainframe whitepaper.

Mainframe is the reason I am writing this article and it’s the blockchain startup in question. They have just finished up their ICO (Initial Coin Offering) and already have a working prototype to showcase that their technology works. But what is Mainframe, and what are they offering? To quote their website, Mainframe is a decentralized network of censorship resistant message routing. Basically, they are building an infrastructure which allows you to send secure and encrypted “messages” through their peer-to-peer network. Message is in quotation marks because human-to-human messages is not the only kind of messages that can have use of Mainframes infrastructure. Corporations can use it to protect their data, governments can use it to secure their emails, social-media users can encrypt their message and choose who can read their messages, consumer products can securely transfer data, fintech companies can protect their data and your money from being hacked, and there are so many other use cases. But how exactly does this technology work? How will Mainframe achieve a secure and censorship network?

How does it work?

The mainframe protocol relies on 5 main pillars to work. These are the following:

1. Encryption

All communication on the Mainframe protocol will utilize the most reliable standards in end-to-end encryption. No outside party, whether government, corporate, or rogue hacker, will have access to your messages or media. -Mainframe.

2. Dark Routing

The network is built from the ground up to frustrate any attempt at tracking the path a message takes. Identifying or monitoring even the existence of communication between parties is effectively impossible. -Mainframe.

3. Incentivizations

With token incentivization, Mainframe can adapt as a vibrant, active, living network. The token economy incentivizes each node to provide bandwidth for packet relay and storage, data services, and file storage. Each node’s creditworthiness is constantly tracked. -Mainframe.

4. Peer-to-peer Architecture

All data services that your Mainframe applications rely on are distributed in redundant fragments throughout the network. This eliminates the need to rely on or manage your own infrastructure, and makes it extremely difficult for would-be censors to deny access. -Mainframe.

5. Interoperability

The Mainframe protocol will be available to any app, network, or blockchain that requires truly private communication services. SDKs and other tools for interoperability will be deployed based on community needs. Our tools for secure messaging will reach across blockchains with smart contract support, including Ethereum, RSK, and Tezos. -Mainframe.

These are all quotes from Mainframe’s website, which you can visit here. (If you want to get even more in-depth of how it all works, check out Mainframe’s whitepaper here). But those 5 pillars should give you a rough picture on how the technology works, but please feel free to read their whitepaper.

Is mainframe just snake-oil or is it real?

Nowadays, a lot of blockchain startups run their ICO without having any kind of proof-of-Concept or a working prototype. But this is not the case for Mainframe. To showcase their technology, and prove that it works, they have built a fully decentralized messaging application on their network. The application, Onyx, can be found here and it is available for anyone to try.

The messaging application is built mainly with workplace messaging in mind. It is built for teams to have secure and encrypted conversations, but it can also be utilized for other kinds of environments. Some examples are Research and Academia, IoT Applications, Bot communications, and any other types of communications you can think of.

Feel free to go ahead and try it out. I have tried it together with my team, and it seems to work just fine. We will be using it more to evaluate it further, but so far we like it!

How can you join the fight against censorship together with Mainframe?

So, how do you join the fight against censorship together with Mainframe? If you are interested in joining powers with Mainframe, there is many ways you could contribute. I will list some of them and talk a little bit about each one.

Investing in Mainframe

Mainframe is, as stated, a blockchain startup (They have been around for a few years) and they just finished up their Initial Coin Offering. If you were trying to invest in their ICO, just like I tried to, then you know how hard that was. People early on recognized the importance of technologies like the one Mainframe offers, and the interest to invest in the ICO was high. The demand led to a private sale only, where a select amount of individuals/organizations were able to invest in it and Mainframe were able to hit their hard cap in that way. But Mainframe, which has spent a lot of effort and time in building a community, knows how important community are to them. They are the core of the company, and to show their appreciation, Mainframe started something they call a crowdgift. The crowdgift replaces the crowd sale completely.

Crowdgift

So, crowdgift is another way you can get involved in Mainframe. But what is it? Well, it is a kind of airdrop but in three different phases. Mainframe plans to give away millions worth of MFT (MFT is the ticker of Mainframe’s token) tokens in total. The first phase is called “Proof of being”. This phase is a literal airdrop. You show up at events where Mainframe is at, and you have a chance to get some tokens directly from the team. The second phase is called “Proof of Freedom”. In this phase, you have the chance to show to Mainframe why they matter to you. If Mainframe likes what you submit, you have the chance to win MFT tokens. As I am writing this article, the third and last phase of the crowdgift have not yet been announced. You can follow their blog here for updates, and they will announce there once the time comes.

Spread the word

Another way for you to get involved is by spreading the word, the good ol’ way. This way will not earn you any financial profit in exchange for helping Mainframes community, but you will definitely earn good karma in life for it. Any chance you have to help fight censorship, you should make use of. If you truly believe in Mainframe’s mission, spreading the word about Mainframe should come naturally to you.

Some last words from me

You shouldn’t confine yourself to just using Mainframe for fighting censorship and protecting your private data. You should always raise your voice and fight for freedom and equality for all, and use all tools available for you. If those aren’t enough, create your own! Don’t completly trust Mainframe words, or anyone else’s for that matter. Always do your own research and analyse what you hear and see. Stand up for your democracy and freedom. To end this article, I want to share one of my favourite quotes:

The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law. -The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, France, 1789.

If you have made it all the way here, thank you for reading my post. And if you liked this post, consider following me on Medium. I will be doing ico reviews and other blockchain & cryptocurrency related posts.

Signed Spectre.