The Latest from ThreeFold - Foundation

🔗Community Updates:

• On the UAE Tech Podcast, ThreeFold co-founder Weynand Kuijpers explains how Threefold works in simple terms and why an Internet by the people for the people is so important. Tune in here!

• Give this conversation between Kyle Ellicott and Scott Yeager a read. The two cover a lot of topics – from Scott’s experience as a DIY farmer and his journey into ThreeFold to advice for fellow farmers.

• Some of the team and members of the ThreeFold ecosystem finished two weeks of gatherings on the Nile to educate and evangelize. With new advocates for the ThreeFold movement (e.g. farmers, investors) by our side, we’ll continue to build a better future through the Internet of Internets.

• We just launched our new ThreeFold Podcast. Listen to the first four episodes here!

• If you’re a community member interested in sharing your story or being featured in ThreeFold content, please reach out.

• Registered to become a validator? Follow the verification process asap to secure your spot.

🔗Technology Developments:

• Curious about what the team has been up to in May? Check out the highlights shared in this update on ThreeFold Grid V3.0.0 Alpha-6!

🔗ThreeFold Grid:

• To learn how to verify your 3Nodes’ payouts on Stellar Blockchain, read this post!

• If you ordered a Titan but have not yet received it, please make sure you have created your V3 farm to ensure quick delivery. Global Titan shipping is ongoing in all regions! Our support team is available via threefold.io or on the ThreeFold Connect app with any questions.

• And if you’re an existing farmer, we urge you to migrate 3Nodes to V3 asap. It just takes a few steps, the migration process is quite simple and fast.

Until next week, ThreeFolders! 🙌

You can find the previous editions on our blog. For older editions of ThreeFold Weekly (Vol 1-11), go to our forum.

🔗Community updates:

• Some of the team, investors, partners, and other contributors (new and old) are gathering on the Nile to help take ThreeFold to the next level. More precise developments and outcomes to be shared as soon as possible!

• ThreeFold’s Sacha Obeegadoo appeared on Macro Visions by Mainstay Digital for an insightful conversation on ThreeFold’s vision and Internet infrastructure, the future of blockchain, digital sovereignty, and more.

• Check out the ThreeFold Meme Gallery, some community members are creating and sharing fun memes. Enjoy!

• Take a look at this cool investment ratio to compare different 3Node builds!

• Registered to become a validator? Don’t forget to follow the verification process to secure your spot!

🔗Technology Developments: 

• In May, the engineering team is working on upgrades, new features and functionalities for Zero-OS, TF Chain, ThreeFold Wallet, and more. Dive into the highlights of TF Grid V3.0.0 Alpha-6 here!

• A small group of community members are working on a weblet to deploy a Hydra node on the ThreeFold Grid. They’ve made incredible progress already and are proof of what a dedicated, talented community we have. Check out their work here!

🔗ThreeFold Grid:

• An initiative to power 3Nodes exclusively with renewable energy is gaining momentum. Take a look at this post to learn more!

• Please migrate your 3Nodes to V3 asap. Simply follow the migration process.

• If you ordered a Titan, please fill in your information for your 3Node to ensure quick delivery. Global Titan shipping continues, though Europe is still facing some delays.

🔗ThreeFold Token:

• After measuring the ThreeFold Token’s performance for five days, the InvestorsObserver gave the TFT a “bullish” rating for going up by 0.28% while the broader crypto market went down 9.83%. (ThreeFold believes in building strong technology that respects people and our planet and creates real value, and driving profit only as a result.)*

See you next week, ThreeFolders!  🙌 

If you’re a community member interested in sharing your story or being featured in ThreeFold content, please reach out!

You can find the previous editions on our blog. For older editions of ThreeFold Weekly (Vol 1-11), go to our forum.

*(TFT is not an investment instrument and this is not investment advice, everyone is free to make their own choices.)

🔗A decentralized world needs a decentralized foundation

I think we’ve already come to Consensus that decentralization has to start at the foundational level. See what I did there? The ThreeFold co-founders have more than 20 years of experience in setting world records in Internet storage and cloud automation technologies. With ThreeFold, they started from scratch to build a fully decentralized Internet infrastructure that’s peer-to-peer and open source. We’re realizing the promise of an Internet built and owned by the people, back to the vision of Web 1 through the implementation of Web 4 technology. For us, it’s obvious that we simply cannot build a fair and equal digital world on top of today’s old-world infrastructure which is owned by the few.

With our fair, inclusive and decentralized Internet infrastructure, we’re laying the foundation for a better world. Following our ethos of planet first – people second – profit (value) only as a result, we’re striving to regenerate our planet and to empower the collective – the many and not the few. By putting our planet and people first, we create real sustainable value. We believe that, together, we’re strong enough to build new regenerative systems powerful enough to enable anyone to have a sovereign, safer and more fulfilling life.

As of today, people from 77 countries are connecting thousands of computers (3Nodes) to the ThreeFold Grid – all contributing to ThreeFold’s open-source peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure. And any node or dApp, actually anything that can run on Linux, can run on top of the ThreeFold Grid in a truly decentralized way. With ThreeFold’s infrastructure and thriving ecosystem, there’s an abundance of potential and opportunities – really anything is possible.

🔗ThreeFold @Consensus

The ThreeFold team and community will soon gather at the Austin Convention Center, 500 E. Cesar Chavez Street, Austin. Meet the ThreeFold team at Exhibit Booth 310 not far from the Networking Lounge. We’ll be there throughout the entire exhibit to connect with participants, share the ThreeFold story and extend the community – Friday, June 10 through Saturday, June 11 from 9am until 6pm.

At our booth, you’ll be able to meet the team, see and hold a Titan 3Node, have the chance to win a free 3Node of your own, find resources that will empower you to get involved, and more.

ThreeFold will also host a gathering outside of the Convention Center. We will share more via our Telegram News Channel when the details are finalized, so stay tuned.

ThreeFold is more than an Internet. It is the foundation for a truly decentralized world. Are you ready to join the global ThreeFold movement?

Check out the full Consensus agenda and take advantage of our 25% discount code to buy tickets.

And don’t forget to let us know if you’ll be joining ThreeFold at Consensus – we’d love to connect with you!

With new devices being connected every day and emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), the metaverse and Web 3 gaining popularity, the demand for Internet capacity is booming. Already, these developments are shifting the Internet’s “center of gravity” from its core to the edges in order to keep up with the growing demand. In an increasingly interconnected world, centralized cloud architectures are proving to be bottlenecks hindering future growth.

Here are some interesting numbers to emphasize the explosive growth of connected devices and the impending data explosion:

• Back in 2018, 90% of global data creation took place within the two previous years.
• In 2022, 4.95 billion people are using the Internet and about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created on a daily basis.
• About 2 billion computers, 15 billion mobile devices and more than 22 billion IoT devices are active worldwide on a daily basis.
• By 2025, more than 1 billion people and 75 billion IoT devices are expected to join the Internet.

And yet, the expansion of Internet capacity still largely occurs in the same centralized and inefficient way. The client-server model of hyperscale data centers is unable to meet this rapidly growing demand due to high building and operational costs to fulfill bandwidth, performance and cybersecurity requirements. As data centers are primarily built in the US, China and Europe, emerging countries have to be connected via sea cables which makes the model’s limitations particularly severe for these countries. And even in countries where many data centers are located, they are built in regions where land and electricity are as cheap as possible. Consequently, the bulk of data centers is still far away from where the majority of users and connected devices reside, and where huge amounts of data are generated that require processing – resulting in a weak distribution of Internet capacity.

About 175 Zettabytes of data will be created by 2025, as our economy becomes increasingly digital and data driven. And this amount of data needs to be captured, stored and activated in a secure, efficient and high-performing way. So, the aforementioned technological use cases will not only accelerate the demand for Internet capacity but also require edge capabilities, such as low latencies, in order to run and scale successfully. In fact, the centralized data center model poses one of the biggest obstacles to the success and spread of the Internet of Things and related applications. This will have to change. Actually, industry experts expect 75% of data to be processed outside of the traditional data center or cloud model by 2025.

🔗The rise of edge computing

Computing needs to be pushed from centralized data centers to the edge to support the massive data consumption coupled to the rise of connected devices and emerging technologies. For instance, as more and more home appliances and devices are getting interconnected through the IoT economy, the amount of real-time data generated within our homes on a daily basis is rapidly expanding. Edge computing tackles the shortcomings of the centralized model in terms of bandwidth, latency and autonomy. It enables applications and solutions to be hosted closer to where their data is being produced and consumed, thereby allowing for low latencies, rapid data processing and real-time decisions. 

The industry analyst company IDC estimates the global spending on edge computing to increase by 14.8% compared to 2021 – amounting to roughly $176 billion in 2022. By 2025, this number is predicted to reach about $274 billion.

The idea of edge computing’s ability to process data on-site is simple enough. Nevertheless, edge computing fails to deliver on its promise as it still remains somewhat centralized today. Granted, so-called edge data centers are closer to where the data is being consumed than hyperscale data centers. But while they do provide an improvement from traditional data centers, they are not able to provide far-edge capabilities, i.e. moving as close to the user and point of data creation as possible. They are simply smaller types of data centers that are still operated in a centralized manner, require the same infrastructure elements as centralized data centers, and usually rely on bigger, central data centers. Quite edgy isn’t it?

As the need for Internet capacity – specifically at the edge – is rapidly intensifying, a new approach to Internet infrastructure is clearly needed. The Web 3 movement created a spur of interest across industries due to its promise to decentralize the Internet and cloud as we know it. Future data will be generated at the edge of the network and Internet which certainly requires an architectural shift away from the current model.

🔗Realizing an interconnected future

Ironically, decades after the spark of the open-source peer-to-peer Internet movement was steamrolled by large tech companies and governments eager to centralize the global Internet, we seem to enter an era of decentralization again. There’s no doubt that large tech companies did bring a lot of innovation to our global Internet and cloud stack. Technically though, peer-to-peer systems have always been the most scalable option. Moreover, open-source architectures have built a strong reputation for providing high levels of security and flexibility. 

In a peer-to-peer model, people and devices are able to exchange directly, without intermediaries or servers in the middle – leading to a more energy-efficient, scalable and flexible paradigm that can expand on-demand. And undoubtedly, open-source will play a key role in edge computing by simplifying and enhancing the building and deployment of software at the edge.

By leveraging open-source and peer-to-peer technologies, ThreeFold has come up with an Internet infrastructure that is capable of far-edge computing. ThreeFold offers a powerful set of compute primitives that provide the agility to create and deploy containers, Virtual Machines (VMs) and Kubernetes environments at the edge. Having integrated all leading industry-standard tools, ThreeFold’s solution allows for a seamless migration of any digital workload, making ThreeFold the ideal infrastructure for edge workloads. And all data produced by these workloads can be stored in a way that is ultra safe, highly reliable and unbreakable. Combined with end-to-end encrypted peer-to-peer networking, applications can be hosted closer to where the data is being consumed – representing the ideal underlying layer for IoT networks, blockchain-based workloads and more to run and scale at the edge seamlessly, efficiently and privately.

The shift towards the edge is inevitable. ThreeFold is the first full-stack, decentralized, peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure in the world that combines compute in the form of highly-optimized containers, storage and network capacity in an all-in-one solution. With  more than 81 Petabytes of capacity distributed across thousands of 3Nodes and 76 countries as well as plans to sponsor the expansion of the Internet to developing regions, ThreeFold is the foundation for a thriving interconnected future that is secure, borderless and at the edge.

• Expand the new Internet by setting up a 3Node at your home or office.
• Help us connect the dots and accelerate our far-edge capabilities.
• Join our global movement today.

🔗Major ThreeFold News:

• The new Grid Enhancement Proposal (GEP) has passed with 96% of our community voting in favour, meaning we’ll be upgrading the ThreeFold Grid to V3 Alpha-5!

🔗Community updates:

• We’ll be attending Consensus 2022 Presented by CoinDesk in June as bronze sponsors to connect with attendees, share the ThreeFold story, and grow the community. Let us know if you or anyone you know will be in Austin and take advantage of our discount code!

• Some of the ThreeFold team and ecosystem are gathering on the Nile this week to discuss how to build a better future through the Internet of Internets and creating abundance.

• We’ve seen questions and confusion in the community around Internet capacity and connectivity. Find the answers here.

• Registered to become a validator? Follow the verification process asap to secure your spot, as we’ll share more information on activation soon!

• Joined our community-led ThreeFold Discord channel!

🔗Technology Developments: 

• ThreeFold Grid V3.0.0 Alpha-6 is on devnet! Check out the full update on what’s happening in May here!

🔗ThreeFold Grid:

• The Grid Enhancement Proposal on cloud unit pricing has passed with 97% of participants agreeing to the current pricing. Thank you all for voting!

• Again, we urge you to migrate 3Nodes to V3 asap. It just takes a few steps, the migration process is quite simple and fast.

• The global shipping of Titan orders continues, though Europe is experiencing some provisioning delays. In case of any specific questions, please reach out to the support team.

Until next time, ThreeFolders!  🙌 

We’re looking for community stories and would love you to share your story and/or be featured in ThreeFold content. Thank you for reaching out!

You can find the previous editions on our blog. For older editions of ThreeFold Weekly (Vol 1-11), go to our forum.

Last November, COP26 shed light on how indecisive our global institutions and governments are in the face of an unprecedented climate crisis. We now have to come to terms with the fact that carbon neutrality is no longer enough. Rising carbon emissions have been linked to an increasing amount of heat waves, droughts, floods and hurricanes globally. It is our collective responsibility to reverse the unintended consequences of our actions. 

Did you know that warnings about the risks and harms of excessive carbon emissions date back as far as the 1960s to a report by former US President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee? We’ve clearly been inactive and ignorant for far too long. There’s always another crisis, another challenge to tackle. But we cannot afford to ignore climate change and biodiversity loss any longer.

We need to tackle the climate crisis with the same urgency, force and determination we do with other crises. And we finally need to face the reality and severity of the climate crisis! After all, Greta Thunberg is right: “Nature does not bargain and you cannot compromise with the laws of physics.”

The time has come for us to put our planet first. It is our duty to regenerate our planet and to support the right practices and organizations aligned with our vision of tomorrow. Now’s the time for regenerative action.

🔗How to save our planet

“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” – Robert Swan

By taking action and making the right choices for our planet and humanity, we can prevent the truly severe levels of global warming and restore the health of our planet. Once emitted, carbon dioxide can persist in the atmosphere for several hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. So, it all starts with reducing global emissions to the lowest level possible. In addition to that, we’ll need to compensate for those emissions that cannot be avoided as well as for all of the carbon and other greenhouse gases we’ve emitted in the past.

As most technological solutions for carbon removal remain expensive and early stage, nature-based solutions are the way forward. And trees, as the world’s largest plants, are an effective way to store carbon.

So, what are we doing at ThreeFold? How are we contributing to restoring the health of our planet? How are we taking climate action?

🔗Our commitment

We believe our planet needs regenerative solutions at a large scale. Our motto is: planet first, people second, profit as a result. Without a healthy planet, humanity can’t survive and no economy can exist.

While the ThreeFold Grid is already much more energy efficient than the traditional Internet, there will always be energy consumption and emissions that cannot be avoided – and thus have to be compensated for. We’re not just going for the carbon neutrality of the ThreeFold Grid but for carbon negativity (or as we prefer to call it, planet positivity), i.e. offsetting its emissions three times through planting and protecting trees.

And we decided to empower our community to take part in our regeneration efforts in a low-threshold way. ThreeFold Farmers will automatically compensate for their 3Nodes’ carbon footprint three times, and everybody will be able to use the ThreeFold Grid’s regenerative Internet capacity while simultaneously supporting impact initiatives.

As we shared in our Planet-Positive Farming Series, we’re setting the plan for a planet-positive Internet by implementing a Voluntary Carbon Credits (VCC) system and supporting planet-positive initiatives with our trusted partners from Take Action Global (TAG). 

🔗Driving regeneration with Take Action Global

We’re aiming to realize the initial promise of the Internet while also regenerating the planet. Our decentralized Internet infrastructure is already highly energy efficient – we’re using about 10 times less energy than any comparable alternative. In December 2021, we announced our commitment to achieve a carbon double win for the ThreeFold Grid.

Together with TAG – experts on climate action and education who were acknowledged for their incredible work by the Anthem Awards – we kicked off a pilot program for tree planting. After measuring the carbon footprint of the Grid and individual 3Nodes, we knew what it would take to go beyond climate neutrality and fulfill our planet-positive commitment.

With our tree planting initiatives in Sierra Leone, Malawi and Cambodia, we’re planting enough trees in 2022 to lay the foundation for achieving and sustaining a carbon double win for our Internet infrastructure. Already, students and teachers in the three countries have planted more than 5,300 trees. Find out more about the pilot program here and head to the EarthProject page for the tree-planting details and how you yourself can get involved.

Once we’ve laid the foundation for the ThreeFold Grid’s carbon double win, we will continue to produce Voluntary Carbon Credits to finance further impact initiatives, such as fostering climate education and renewable energy grid developments to enhance the life of communities.

🔗A regenerative Internet for the planet and the people

We all need to take responsibility and to pull our own weight. But we’re in this together. And together, this will happen. After kicking off our pilot program a month ahead of schedule, we’re well set to achieve the carbon double win for the ThreeFold Grid – driving the regeneration of our planet.

We are pioneering the creation of an energy-efficient and regenerative Internet built and owned by the people. The ThreeFold ecosystem consists of like-minded individuals and partners that share our values and support us in our mission. United in our shared beliefs in open source, peer-to-peer, equality and inclusion, we come together to build a better Internet. And we’re being acknowledged for our work – we’re nominated for the Sustainable Investment in Action Awards in the category “Basic Needs”.

We’re making it easy for everyone to join us – all you have to do is connect a 3Node to the ThreeFold Grid and you’ll effortlessly regenerate the earth through providing Internet capacity – a process we call ‘farming’ because it’s a greener, purposeful alternative to crypto mining.

Are you ready to join us in our mission?

And don’t forget:

“What we do today will determine what the world looks like tomorrow.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

P.S.: If you have ideas or suggestions for further planet-positive initiatives or potential partnerships, let us know on our forum.