The Latest from ThreeFold - Foundation

🔗The ThreeFold Grid

In January we launched ThreeFold Grid 2.4 on Mainnet and evolved it through version 2.8. In September, we launched ThreeFold Grid 3.0 on testnet and just this week, we launched TF Grid 3.0 on mainnet, with limited capacity for now.

ThreeFold Grid 3 brings a massive leap forward in the decentralization of the ThreeFold Grid and makes for a much simpler user experience for farmers and grid users.

The starting point ThreeFold Grid 3:

• What’s New in TF Grid 3.0
• Manual

🔗Notable Tech Developments

Other new developments on the tech side included QSFS (Quantum Safe Storage System), TF Chain, Smart Contracts and more (take a look at the new tech section we launched with the new threefold.io this year and of course our knowledge base).

🔗The ThreeFold Token (TFT)

2021 was all about bringing TFT to more chains and making TFT more accessible, with the BSC integration, TF Chain, and 1inch.

Read about our TFGrid & TFT Price Simulation.

🔗ThreeFold Farming

Today, the ThreeFold Grid is live in 57 countries with more than 1,450 Nodes online. Thanks to all the Farmers who both built or bought and connected 3Nodes!

In 2021, we introduced a certified farming program and farming rewards 3.0 which will apply from ThreeFold Grid 3.1 onwards (end Jan). We also established weekly 3Node updates to keep you in the loop at all times.

🔗Partnerships

Throughout 2021, we announced key partnerships with ownCloud, DigiThree Labs, CasperLabs and many more. Most recently, two of these partnerships were featured in the news, TAG and Computecoin. All of these will be launched in 2022.

🔗2022 Preview (Q1)

In the first part of 2022, we are launching our grid.

Read our launch plan and offer feedback!

> OUR LAUNCHPLAN Q1 2022

🔗The ThreeFold Token

Now is the time to buy TFT! (Please take a look at the launch plan above.)

In 2022, our goal for the ThreeFold Token is to be available at as many entry points as possible. We’re planning integrations with many ecosystems like Cosmos to achieve great networking effects for the money networks. There will be discounts for Utilization based on pre-purchasing of TFT, and more.

🔗Wrapping Things Up

There’s no other project out there like ThreeFold. TF Grid 3 is here, the grid is continuously growing across the world, and this collective effort is uniquely positioned to truly decentralize the Internet. Remember: ThreeFold is inevitable.

So, here we go! You can expect many more updates soon on what was covered above. And may the year 2022 be full of health, happiness and opportunities for all of us!

Please be reminded we are a decentralized movement, we need your help to let us all “BE THE INTERNET.” Become a farmer, register for a validator, contribute to our movement, develop a solution on top of TF Grid … If you’re not sure how to help out but want to, please get in touch on our two-way chat or here on the forum.

The third release of the ThreeFold Grid represents a major step in the decentralization of the People’s Internet with the Smart Contract for IT coming to life on the ThreeFold Blockchain (aka “TF Chain”). Built on the Substrate framework, TF Chain represents the layer-0 for all current and future technologies to provision decentralized Internet capacity. 

But what is Substrate to begin with? And what exactly does our TF Chain do?

🔗What is TF Chain and what is Substrate?

TF Chain is the universal smart contract layer on the ThreeFold Grid. It’s an application-specific blockchain customized for the operation of a single application – provisioning decentralized compute, storage and network capacity. 

Substrate is a blockchain-building framework from Parity that allows developers to simply create future-proof solo blockchains or parachains for any use case. Parity was founded by Ethereum’s co-founder and first CTO Gavin Wood in 2015, and went on to develop Substrate to power a multichain, interoperable and decentralized Internet.

🔗Why did we choose Substrate for our TF Chain?

Substrate brings clear benefits to TF Chain in relation to its frameworks for developers, its interoperability with other blockchain ecosystems and its huge community. More than 150 projects from NFTs to DeFi are already building on it.  

By providing a solid, mature and secure layer for custom blockchains, Substrate is built for adoption. The blockchain framework was built with the programming language Rust and is modular by design. Choosing Substrate allowed our developer team to leverage great blockchain constructs and efficiently build TF Chain instead of re-inventing the wheel. 

Its flexible, modular and composable architecture enables our team to focus on what matters the most – the unique demands of ThreeFold Grid. For example, we’ve built  a Grid module with specific functionalities for farms and nodes. Just like a chef can invent a new recipe and add it to a menu, Substrate allows our developers to build and add as many custom functionalities to TF Chain as we’d like, in a fully decentralized way. 

A major benefit that comes with TF Chain being built on Substrate is the native compatibility with the Polkadot ecosystem, opening up the opportunity for ThreeFold to become a parachain on the Polkadot network and seamlessly bridging to other Substrate-based chains in the future.

🔗What’s the purpose of TF Chain?

For ThreeFold to be a truly decentralized peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure, people should be able to use Internet infrastructures from anywhere without any intermediaries like AWS. TF Chain serves exactly that purpose. 

It orchestrates the provisioning of compute, storage and network on the ThreeFold Grid via Zero-OS, removing all forms of intermediaries present in today’s centralized IT infrastructures. Put simply, TF Chain allows people to provide and use cloud resources in a 100% decentralized way. 

🔗What does TF Chain do?

TF Chain is responsible for achieving consensus on all Internet capacity transactions on the ThreeFold Grid and to store them in a historical record. This prevents users from “double spending” their ThreeFold Tokens and ensures the correct execution of Internet capacity provisioning via smart contracts, while also protecting the network from potential attacks. 

An exciting feature that comes with TF Chain 3.0 is a totally new peer-to-peer billing framework for Internet capacity provisioning and workload deployment. This module allows for all functionalities of the ThreeFold Grid to be provisioned peer-to-peer between users and farmers. Therefore, the ThreeFold Token now also lives on the Polkadot network, allowing it to bridge back and forth from the Stellar network and potentially from other chains in the future.

While TF Chain builds on the Substrate framework, most of its functionalities are custom-built to fit the specific needs of the ThreeFold Grid – from Internet capacity provisioning, workload deployments, and payment and billing processes, to digital twin creation and much more. By executing all these actions via smart contracts in an automated and decentralized way, the activity on the ThreeFold Grid is always secured by blockchain technology and available to other users for open collaboration. 

Farms can now be registered on our new TF Chain Portal!

🔗The Future

While Internet capacity provisioning and workload deployments are already executed via TF Chain, the minting of TFT according to the Proof-of-Capacity algorithm remains on the Stellar blockchain for now.

Building our own application-specific blockchain represents a major step towards decentralizing the ThreeFold Grid and ecosystem – a massive thank you to our developer team for this great achievement! 🙏

Want to dive deeper? We invite you to:

• Learn more about how smart contracts work on TF Chain 3.0 here.
• Join the ThreeFold Grid 3.0 testnet conversations here.
• Check our roadmap here.

The Explorer was designed to provide a simple way for anyone to find decentralized Internet capacity on the ThreeFold Grid, and we’re thrilled to announce a new user interface for Grid 3.x on both testnet and devnet.

The new explorer builds upon the recent migration to the Parity Substrate, bringing true decentralization to the way compute, storage and network capacity information is sourced from 3Nodes. The previous explorer (used for 2.x) has been sourcing its information from a centralized database as TF Chain was still under construction. Now, the new explorer receives its information via GraphQL straight from the ThreeFold Blockhain.

🔗What is GraphQL?

GraphQL is an open source data query language for APIs. The GraphQL interface queries our blockchain and displays the information registered on it in a command-line interface. We, in turn, created a graphical representation of that information in our explorer.

🔗What to expect from the new Explorer UI

The new Explorer UI allows you to explore the available Internet capacity connected to ThreeFold Grid easier than ever before. As of now, the new Explorer displays data about the compute, storage, network and gateways connected to the Grid 3.x testnet and devnet by ThreeFold Farmers.

The statistics section gives you an overview of key information about our testnet (as of November 30th, 2021) as displayed below. Our farmer community has already connected more than 100 nodes (across 16 countries), and we have seen more than 1,400 contracts deployed on the ThreeFold Grid 3.0 testnet since its launch.

All screenshots in this post are from the ThreeFold Grid 3.x testnet Explorer, and the numbers are growing continuously.

Once a farm ID gets registered to the new TF Chain Portal, all the relevant information (e.g. uptime, nodes specifications, location) of farms are automatically displayed on the Explorer for users to find their ideal decentralized Internet capacity.

Users can now explore all farms and 3Nodes using multiple filtering options (e.g. farm name or farm ID), making it simpler than ever before to find the decentralized Internet capacity they are looking for.

Not sure what the new Admin Portal is about? We’ve covered all the details in our previous update, check it out!

We also made the world map bigger to improve the display of the available decentralized Internet capacity.

Dark mode is finally available for the ThreeFod Grid 3.x, bringing a more comfortable navigation for some of us. Just click on the crescent/sun icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, and you’re good to go.

We invite you to take a look at the ThreeFold Grid 3.x Explorer UI overview with more details here.

Keep in mind, the overview of all 3Nodes worldwide across all nets can be found here and this will phase out as we approach 3.x mainnet launch as shared on our previous update.

Visit our forum to share you experiences with the new explorer interface here.

Last week, we shared an update on what’s new in TF Grid 3.0.1 – and the path to mainnet! There’s been a lot of exciting progress by the team, and we wanted to share with you some more specifics where we can – starting with the admin portal!

🔗What is the admin portal?

One of the requests from farmers and grid users was a to have a simpler user experience. The admin portal (aka TF Chain UI) is a response to that feedback, a graphical user interface for farmers and grid users on top of the TF Chain.

The admin portal is the starting point for anyone to start working with the TF Grid. For Farmers in particular they now have a much simpler way to create a farming identity and then connect their infrastructure to the ThreeFold Grid 3.0. It is a one stop shop to start a farm. Beyond that, it’s a way for any TF Grid user to create their account on the TF Chain, get a Twin, and get started (testing for now) on the TF Grid 3.0 devnet or testnet.

Find links to get started at the bottom!

🔗What does the admin portal do?

The admin portal is a place for TF Grid users to:

Create an account on the TF Chain and a digital twin to start smart contracting on TF Chain (allowing you to also link to your IP address for added security).

Operate a bridge between Stellar and TF Chain on Parity Substrate (deposit TFT from Stellar, or return unused TFT to the Stellar chain, the bridge is active in both directions)

For farmers: create and manage your farm(s), provide IPv4 addresses available for your farm(s), attach a Stellar wallet for TFT payouts, and a link to download the bootloader for testnet and devnet (mainnet is on its way).

The portal also links to the new capacity explorer, which we’ll share more about early next week.

🔗How is this an improvement over the old process?

Previously, all of these tools existed, but not always in the same place or with a clear and easy-to-use UX/UI. We’ve tested this portal with people of all technical levels, and the response has been great! We believe the portal is a huge step forward for anyone using or managing the ThreeFold Grid.

More improvements will come in the next versions. As an example, we’re planning for you to be able to see the connected nodes linked to your farm with their status, earned tokens, etc.

🔗Get started

The portal is currently available on devnet and testnet. You can also find information on the portal in our library here. Please note, you’ll need to install the Polkadot{.js} extension and create or import an account in order to get started.

Visit our forum to discuss you experiences with the new admin portal here.

Welcome to the fourth part of our journey through the decentralization space. After exploring Dfinity, Akash, and most recently Filecoin, we’ll now explore Storj to find out what we have in common and where ThreeFold stands out. Here we go!

🔗Storj & how the project compares to ThreeFold

Storj is a decentralized cloud storage (DCS) solution founded in 2014 by Shawn Wilkinson, offering cloud object storage on its network of nodes and ISPs spread across different countries.

ThreeFold and Storj are both open source projects that view transparency as an integral part of their business philosophy. Actually, ThreeFold is the first full-stack blockchain-enabled cloud to be made open source – all of our code is open source and available for everyone to review or use.

Another similarity is that security and privacy are crucial aspects of our projects. Both are private by design and believe it’s vital that every person has total control and ownership over their data – not even Storj or ThreeFold can access the data of users within their respective ecosystems, creating trustless environments. Storj provides security and privacy by encrypting the data by an Uplink client before it is uploaded to its DCS. The data is then split into pieces which are distributed across different nodes and ISPs connected to Storj’s cloud network. At ThreeFold, we’re creating an entirely secure, peer-to-peer IT ecosystem that empowers users and gives them back control and ownership of their own data. We’re secure across all dimensions of our solutions – from our operating system Zero-OS to Quantum Safe File System (QSFS) and Planetary Network.

While Storj does not have its own operating system, we’ve built our Zero-OS from scratch. It allows servers to run autonomously and workloads to be hosted securely, preventing them from administrative exploits and errors. The self-driving and self-healing features of Zero-OS eliminate backdoors, reduce the hacking surface and remove the need for human involvement.

Both projects are compatible with certain IT tools and protocols. While Storj is S3-compatible and integrates a couple of developer tools like FileZilla or Fastly, ThreeFold is highly compatible with leading industry standards and tools from S3 to Docker containers, Kubernetes and more. Moreover, ThreeFold can run anything that runs on Linux, allowing for a seamless migration of any digital workload, even from traditional cloud providers like Microsoft Azure or AWS.

A difference between the projects is that Storj focuses on providing the storage layer for developers to build storage applications like Dropbox upon, rather than offering such services themselves, whereas our energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure includes solutions like the ThreeFold Marketplace of ready-made peer-to-peer applications that runs on our Edge Virtual Data Center (eVDC). Moreover, we’re working with innovative teams and developers to develop self-sovereign alternatives to commonly used applications (e.g. video conferencing, office tools).

🔗Network & Storage

On Storj’s decentralized network, uploaded data is automatically spread across nodes in different countries. The storage capacity on Storj’s network is increased whenever a new node is connected to it. There are roughly 9,6 Petabyte of data stored on Storj with nodes in more than 80 countries, whereas roughly 85 Petabyte of storage, compute, and network capacity are deployed on the ThreeFold Grid. Currently, the nodes connected to our Grid are spread over more than 50 countries.

While Storj only offers storage capacity, ThreeFold provides storage, compute, and network capacity. Moreover, our system is endlessly scaleable, whereas Storj’s scalability is limited as it does not empower people without technical skills to contribute and has more complex structures, such as its Satellite component which will be explained further down. We’re continuously extending our reach and our system is capable of seamlessly growing on demand, as it enables anyone to become a 3Node on our ThreeFold Grid. Moreover, our self-driving and self-healing technology is unique in the space and removes the need for monitoring and maintaining the nodes.

Storage nodes on Storj are responsible for storing and returning data reliably. While Storj generally allows anyone with the excess capacity and bandwidth to run a node on its network, the project does not offer certified hardware. With Storj, anyone who wants to become a node operator has to build their own nodes which have to meet the specific hardware requirements of Storj. At ThreeFold, our technology was designed to scale to anywhere electricity and bandwidth can be found to meet local digital infrastructure needs, to empower the unconnected and to drive our vision of an interconnected world. This is also why we’re working with certified hardware partners to provide plug-and-play 3Nodes. These 3Nodes enable even people without technical skills to join and contribute to what we like to call the People’s Internet, as we believe that everyone should be given equal chances and that Internet access is a human right.

Next to the storage nodes, there are two other main components of the Storj network: Uplink and Satellite. Uplink is Storj’s umbrella term for any application that stores or retrieves data and encrypts, encodes, and coordinates data with other services. Storj’s Satellite consists of a set of storage node services like storage node reputation, data repair, billing and more. Storj users have to sign up for accounts on Satellites and pick a specific Satellite to trust. While any user could run their own Satellite in theory, Storj recommends users to create an account on a Satellite that is hosted by a third party like Storj Labs to reduce complexity. This approach, however, fosters centralization, whereas our peer-to-peer infrastructure is an open system where anyone can provide and utilize cloud resources without any intermediaries. On top of that, we’ve implemented cryptographically-secured deployment specifications, called Smart Contracts for IT, to ensure that workloads run as intended in a tamper-proof way, and allow systems to scale and heal autonomously without intermediaries.

🔗Tokenomics & Payment Methods

Both projects have native utility tokens. While the Storj token is an Ethereum-based token that represents a unit of storage capacity on the Storj network, ThreeFold Tokens (TFT) can represent either a unit of compute, storage or network on the ThreeFold Grid. Some Storj community members criticize a lack of utility of the Storj token, as storage capacity on Storj can be purchased and paid for not only in Storj token but also using fiat payment options like credit card or invoice. However, Storj themselves don’t see this as an issue and state that the intention behind their tokens is to facilitate the provision and receipt of data storage and not to create a digital currency or any other kind of financial instrument. In contrast, our ThreeFold Tokens are the fuel for IT capacity, as they allow people to hold current and future cloud capacity on the ThreeFold Grid. Moreover, a limited supply of four billion ThreeFold Token has been set to keep the currency scarce, while the burning mechanism simultaneously ensures continuous rewards for current and future nodes. Find out more about our two algorithms, Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) and Proof-of-Utilization (PoU), in our tokenomics.

By connecting storage nodes to Storj’s network and providing storage capacity to others, node operators get rewarded with Storj tokens which they receive from Storj Labs as a centralized payment operator, whereas ThreeFold Token are already rewarded upon the connection of capacity to our Grid. Moreover, storage capacity on Storj’s network can only be purchased with a subscription-based model. With ThreeFold, anyone can become a farmer and be rewarded income in the form of ThreeFold Tokens for expanding the Internet by contributing cloud capacity. ThreeFold Tokens incentivize an open and autonomous peer-to-peer system free from any type of intermediary. We’re enabling anyone to become an independent farmer, as we believe in empowering people and that no single entity should have the power to control systems. Based on our ThreeFold Blockchain, which will be released on Testnet 3.0 soon, a new discount as well as billing model will be introduced. The latter will allow users to authorize smart contracts to automatically deduct their wallets according to the capacity they use.

🔗Conclusion

In summary, we both share the same vision of a decentralized Internet. The biggest difference between Storj and ThreeFold is that Storj is focused on providing storage, whereas ThreeFold does not only provide storage but also compute and network capacity. While Storj seeks to be the storage layer for the decentralized Internet, ThreeFold provides the low-level primitives for a truly decentralized Internet: compute, storage and network.

While we’re the largest, most advanced peer-to-peer cloud infrastructure in the world and are expanding fast, some aspects of Storj’s storage network still function in a rather centralized manner, such as their payment model and Satellites. In addition to that, we’re providing the ideal infrastructure for edge workloads. The project could therefore benefit from moving on top of our fully decentralized, highly energy-efficient and autonomous infrastructure. Together, we could drive the decentralization of storage capacity all over the world. We believe in a world without boundaries, where people are able to share information, value and knowledge without limits nor intermediaries. To achieve this vision and to effect change at a large scale it takes collaboration.

Thanks for coming along and joining me on this journey through the decentralization and blockchain space. After four stops, we’re taking a break. If you’d like us to continue this journey, let us know and feel free to make suggestions for our next stops here!

Tim Berners-Lee created the web server and browser in 1990. Back then, the web was of a free, rather decentralized nature in which no single entity was to control the access to it. With the client-server architecture of the web, however, centralization came about. Nowadays, the web as well as the Internet in general are highly centralized. There are only a few companies acting as gatekeepers to large parts of today’s Internet. The Internet as we know it is continuously struggling with issues related to its centralized nature – from censorship and attacks on net neutrality to manipulation attempts from companies with monopolistic power. These issues are systematic and major players like Amazon or Facebook are benefitting from the situation as it is. This business model is also highly reliant on centralized hyperscale data centers that also come with a whole set of issues, from their vulnerability and limited scalability to their extremely high energy consumption and more.

People have become the product of a business model where companies offer their services in exchange for personal data – in order to capitalize on and exploit the data, basically squeezing people out for their data like oranges for juice. In times where data exploitation is the norm, it makes sense that data is often referred to as digital oil or gold. Moreover, algorithms of social media platforms increasingly lead to content provoking controversy and addictive engagement as this type of content tends to increase the time people spend on the platforms – with shocking impacts like The Wall Street Journals’ investigation “The Facebook Files” and The New York Times’ audio series Rabbit Hole show.

All of these issues have strengthened the push towards decentralization, mainly associated with the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. However, many of the projects in the decentralized space still rely on centralized providers or structures to some degree. The second most-popular blockchain in the world, Ethereum, for example, has 60% of its nodes run on centralized cloud providers with 25% of them running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Akash, a blockchain-based cloud computing platform, prevents unutilized capacity from centralized cloud computing services from going to waste. Leveraging this underutilized cloud capacity, however, also causes Akash to be highly dependent on centralized capacity. Dfinity’s platform for decentralized apps (dApps) is based on an ecosystem of independent data centers, which makes it rather centralized on an infrastructural level.

While the previously mentioned projects are all seeking to push decentralization, they all have one thing in common: they rely on centralized structures or providers at least to some degree and therefore, are not fully decentralized yet. So, what does true decentralization look like?

🔗How ThreeFold is Changing the Game

It is our mission to transform the Internet and Cloud and to create borderless opportunities for humanity. Therefore, we‘re truly committed to decentralizing the infrastructure behind the Internet to scale current and future digital workloads. At Threefold, we’re building an entirely new infrastructure from the ground up, starting with a Grid of new, neutral capacity and our operating system Zero-OS. Our ThreeFold Grid, based on open-source technology, enables an autonomous, secure, and energy-efficient infrastructure that allows for unlimited scalability while remaining affordable. Our Grid is the largest and most advanced peer-to-peer infrastructure in the world, already available in more than 50 countries and keeps expanding fast. With our energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure, uniting compute, storage, and network, we are much more comprehensive than other projects.

At ThreeFold, we believe in giving power to the people by developing technologies that empower individuals, enable social participation, and foster collaboration. We’re enabling even people without technical skills to join the network with plug-and-play 3Nodes offered through our certified hardware partners. The ThreeFold Grid is therefore more inclusive and allows any individual to participate. Our peer-to-peer nature removes the need of centralized servers and any type of intermediary, allowing applications and data to live closer to where they’re being utilized.

In addition to that, we believe that no one but you should own your data. Our technology empowers every user to be data sovereign, giving them full control over their own data by using a variety of innovative technologies, such as autonomous IT, blockchain, and peer-to-peer networking. This way, our technology is turning traditional IT upside down, enabling a data-sovereign Internet that gives users control and ownership of their data in an entirely secure, peer-to-peer IT ecosystem.

All in all, we provide the low-level primitives for a decentralized world, enabling any project to run on a fully decentralized, energy-efficient, and self-healing infrastructure. As we truly believe in collaboration to effect change at a large scale to fully decentralize the Internet and Cloud, our partnership ecosystem keeps growing. Most recently, we announced a strategic partnership with ownCloud, an alternative to public clouds with more than 200 million users worldwide, that aims to advance the decentralization of the consumer cloud.

So, we’d like to invite you to join forces with us to further push the decentralization of the Internet together – whether by becoming a 3Node or building on our ThreeFold Grid, by buying our ThreeFold Token (TFT), our currency for a decentralized world, or by testing our P2P Cloud. Let’s revolutionize the Internet together!