How You Can Join the People's Internet

An entirely new Internet economy that is owned by all of us. Add capacity, earn income!

June 9, 2021

A Smart Contract for all IT workloads

The Smart Contract for IT allows you, your company or your community to execute the storage and running of your files and applications securely with consensus and automatic billing.

Sacha Obeegadoo

May 25, 2021

How ThreeFold offers Data Sovereignty

ThreeFold is building the engine for an Internet where people can finally be data sovereign.

Sam Taggart

May 23, 2021

A Scalable and Secure Operating System

To create a new Internet from scratch, ThreeFold had to start at the operating system level.

Just like a brain is an interconnected network of neurons, the Internet (or internet) is a global interconnected network of computers and devices that communicate with each other via the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture.

To create a new Internet from scratch, ThreeFold had to start at the operating system (OS) level. An operating system is a software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. And this is how Zero OS was born

🔗What makes Zero OS special?

Zero OS is a stateless and lightweight operating system. Given it has no shell, remote or server interface, it is much safer than the big majority of the OSs on the market. When storing your data on Zero OS, it is fingerprinted and made available only when requested by you or those you provide access to.

The state of an application represents its state of being in a given moment in time. Think of a stateless transaction as vending machines, a single request and a response. In ThreeFold’s Internet infrastructure, this can be represented as data being accessible only when requested. The only way to access data on Zero OS is via the private key (or fingerprint) of a user. In that sense, the data is not accessible unless the data owner requests access to it.

🔗How does Zero OS apply to developers?

Thanks to its lightweight architecture, Zero OS is a perfect fit to run microservice architectures and emerging IT workloads such as IoT, Blockchains, Big Data, and more. A key benefit of microservice architecture is the freedom it offers you to choose the best runtime for the task at hand.

Let’s take the example of decentralizing service-oriented developing teams. A common challenge there is that most of the time they don’t really understand the applications they are exposing. But no one knows the data infrastructure of the applications better than those who craft them.

ThreeFold permits decentralized developer teams with the ability to share keys (access) to the developing environment on Zero OS and the gateways to the world wide web within the secure peer-to-peer overlay network. This is game changing. Also with all the automation frameworks provided, it creates the perfect environment to develop current and emerging technologies.

Put shortly, decentralized development and integration is now officially an organizational or cultural change, not a technical one anymore.

🔗Zero OS allows anyone to provide sovereign capacity

Given stateless systems separate the OS configuration and user data, Zero OS simplifies the maintenance and the deployment of digital workloads, while making it impossible to hack into user data on a hardware level.

3Nodes provide all the storage, compute and network primitives for a new internet infrastructure. Given they are booted with Zero OS, anyone can now participate in the Internet economy without jeopardizing user data sovereignty and security.

Conclusively, Zero OS is ultra secure, perfect to develop current and future technologies, and enables anyone to take part in the planet positive and data sovereign Internet brought by ThreeFold.

Learn more about Zero OS and the grid primitives here.

Sacha Obeegadoo

May 18, 2021

ThreeFold’s Planet Positive Plan

ThreeFold is taking not just a sustainable approach, we’re setting the plan for a planet positive Internet.

Sam Taggart

May 15, 2021

Not your average blockchain project

Sometimes we're compared to blockchain projects. We love the blockchain but that's just not who we are.

Sometimes we’re compared to blockchain projects. We love blockchains and have many partners there – CasperLabs, DigiByte, Polygon, and Dash, to name a few – but that’s just not what we are. Here’s a few ways we are different than the “typical” blockchain project.

🔗ThreeFold is actually much more than a blockchain

ThreeFold is not actually even a blockchain project, rather it uses blockchain technology by combining it with other cutting-edge solutions. It’s way more that just a blockchain alternative to a public cloud. ThreeFold started everything from scratch – built a super-lightweight and shell-less operating system, and a fully autonomous (self-driving and self-healing) architecture to enable a true peer-to-peer infrastructure. With zero intermediaries on the ThreeFold Grid, that leads to high efficiency and minimum complexity.

The blockchain database (BCDB) acts as a registry for the workloads on the Threefold Grid. Workloads can only be accessed and managed with the private key of the data owner. The BCDB can prove to any party that their workloads are executed exactly as intended and that their data is untouched.

In most distributed systems, data is stored multiple times to guarantee redundancy. This leads to a lot of unnecessary overhead and is also not the most secure mechanism. ThreeFold uses a dispersed storage algorithm to store the workloads on the ThreeFold Grid. The dispersed storage algorithm breaks data into shards and stores them on different nodes. This enables two things – first, performance efficiency (no need for consensus to run compute and storage) and second, energy efficiency (as there’s no more need for data duplication).

As mentioned up top, we have many partners in the space and we are working with them to bring true decentralization to their blockchains.

🔗ThreeFold had no ICO nor IEO. It pre-farmed its tokens

ThreeFold didn’t have an ICO or IEO. ICOs and IEOs are fundraising schemes for blockchains to sell tokens to investors either directly (ICO) or through regulated exchanges (IEO). Instead, ThreeFold pre-farmed (ThreeFold’s sustainable alternative to mining) its tokens prior to going to the market and listed them on several exchanges, public and decentralized.

This allowed ThreeFold to incentivize its early contributors, while also securing the ongoing development of the project until the launch of the Threefold Grid 2.0 in April 2020. Pre-mining is also an organic approach to the market, in line with ThreeFold’s values and vision of delivering products over using hype.

🔗Product over Hype

In some cases, ICOs and IEOs were surrounded with hype. It is always very hard to judge the ability of a project to deliver its promises through a white paper.

Instead of fundraising with a white paper, the technological development remained the primary focus. For 4 years, ThreeFold developed the whole technology stack, starting with an operating-system built from scratch to the autonomous smart contract and virtual system administrator technology that enables a fully-autonomous peer-to-peer Cloud.

In 2020, ThreeFold held the public launch of the ThreeFold Token on Liquid Exchange. At that time, the ThreeFold Grid was already live in its 2nd version.

Today, you can go through the whole Threefold Universe and find ready-to-use products. You can participate in growing the world’s most advanced peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure, or use the peer-to-peer compute and storage capacity available on the P2P Cloud.

Sacha Obeegadoo

April 20, 2021

A Better Understanding of Wealth

Wealth is more than the accumulation of money and resources.

🔗A better understanding of wealth

Wealth is more than the accumulation of money and resources. It can be generated in ways other than through conventional financial means. The financial justice warrior, Bernard Liataer, highlighted that to capture the wealth of our societies, our culture and our environments, we have to pay heed to the notion of wealth as well-being.

But how do we obtain that well-being? We all know the answer to this question – we have a sense of well-being when all of our needs are met. It is not just the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter but also the need to be a creative participant in our community, have a voice in our own destiny, and pursue our own spiritual development unhindered by social sanction. Developing real wealth implies making choices that enable all members of the community to attain well-being. Achieving sustainable wealth implies meeting the present’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Digital Twin has been created while taking into consideration the different types of community capital that need to be achieved to create real wealth:

Natural Capital - It includes the community environment that produces more assets. Our today’s economies failed to measure, understand and account for the true value of nature’s riches - clean air and water, soil and pollination for food, the social, intrinsic and spiritual values of natural beauty. Digital Twin will be the tool for us to place a proper value on Natural capital finally.

Technological Capital – It includes how we harness our intellectual resources to create tools, systems, machines, arts, skills, and materials designed to improve our lives. This is what Digital Twin is all about - providing the required technology to enhance our lives and those of our communities’ members through collective efforts and intelligence. Digital Twin is only the foundation for this future global well-being. People will support education and creativity throughout the world and give access to material information required to create additional innovative technologies.

Social Capital – It recognizes the economic importance of all the ways we are connected: the relationships, our networks and values we share and the cooperative systems, and all its different components we use for interacting. Nowadays, our social capital is threatened through the repetitive act of violence, betrayal of trust, exclusion or less sharing and caring towards our fellow humans. Digital Twin has been created to encourage the easy sharing and exchange of resources and cooperate with each other on a platform.

Historical and Cultural Capital – Through history, we have learned, and now we are transmitting our cultural understanding and recommendation about the economic and financial system to others through an open-source, public and transparent peer-to-peer exchange protocol.

Human Capital – It includes all capabilities that people have to learn, invent, create, work, care for each other, and contribute to the community. This is the reason why Digital Twin has been created - A project to benefit us all.
Financial Capital – It is the creation of real wealth through the availability of liquidity resources through a multi-currency system and Savings & Investments made by individuals and institutions. By strengthening and increasing this type of capital, our peer-to-peer platform believes that it is the obvious path to a successful economic development.

All of these forms of capital produce the critical flows of assets through the economic system. Capital is the foundation, the reproductive system, the greenhouse that grows a healthy economy. This has been one of the fundamental beliefs of Digital Twin - For the well-being of worldwide communities.

Alexandre Hannelas

January 27, 2021

Actually, you are the product

Now more than ever with this global pandemic happening since late 2019, our lives are being shaped by our interaction with the digital world

🔗Actually, you are the product

Now more than ever with this global pandemic happening since late 2019, our lives are being shaped by our interaction with the digital world - work meetings on Zoom followed by Skype or Messenger Video Call with your family before a quick run with your favourite running app and a google search for your next meal. Technologies and services offer us a lot and greatly improve our daily lives. But what’s the real cost of these tools we rely on so much?

A lot of companies, especially those offering free services, collect data about you. It might be data you knowingly and willingly share to enjoy the benefits of the service (name, age, email address,..) or data that you might not realize you are sharing, like your approximate location through your IP address or your social network identifier or apps accessing your contacts.

While some of this data, and its collection, may appear harmless to some, what happens behind the scenes is a real source of concern as the data collection is only the first step in a long and opaque process. Adtech companies combine this information and create an assumed picture of you that we may call a digital doppelganger - Your “digital secret identity”. Actually, you may have hundreds or thousands of different doppelgangers held by companies you’ve never heard of.

Our data are so valuable that big tech giants spend so much time and effort building the platform that is useful for us and giving those platforms to us for free. Well, this data is collected for a single purpose: to better predict your behaviour and target you with ads.

Real example:

Imagine a person who has never talked about their political views online, never shared anything related to politics, never donated any money and never mentioned anything even in their private emails. Now the algorithms models that had been developed can analyse his/her Facebook likes or the music he/she listen to and with high accuracy can predict their political affiliation, and then being the target of unnecessary ads.

P.S: This is not only for political affiliation. It stands out for every products and service using these marketing tools.

Technology isn’t just hardware and software; it’s a fundamental component of every aspect of our lives and society. Inventions need to be created with social impact in mind. The invention should not be driven solely by profit, and the long-term effects should not be ignored and unknowable.

If you are not paying for it, you are not the customer. You are the product being sold. It’s a powerful phrase, a modern dialogue to get people rethinking their relationship to social media.

With Digital Twin, regain your freedom where you will live your digital life securely and privately. Now, you will have one and unique digital identity to interact in human-to-human way with your peers, edit, manage and store your documents, publish your web and make automatic payments.

With Digital Twin, only you own your data and no one else.

Alexandre Hannelas

January 27, 2021

Why should I care?

Do you remember the time where you could create your own safe space and decide what others see and know?

🔗Why should I care?

Do you remember when you could create your own safe space and decide what others see and know? Now, whether you are at home, in the middle of a city, or hiking a mountain, you’re never really alone. More and more, the technology we used is connected to the internet. Cars, fridges, energy meters, even baby monitors send out data about you and your family 24/7 beyond your control.

🔗Behind the scene

This data is collected for spurious purposes: to better predict your behaviour and target you with ads. The targeted advertising ecosystem, using trackers included in the sites you visit and Software Development Kits (SDKs) in the apps you use, aims to get a better picture of you to present you with more relevant ads.

But it doesn’t stop there. The ad tech ecosystem has one main feature: connecting companies to you through an opaque and technically complex infrastructure, allowing almost anyone to enter the data collection and exchange market. Moreover, this means any companies can participate in processes such as Real-Time Bidding (an automated process that enables advertisers to target particular groups of people on different websites, videos, apps without having to negotiate prices directly), only to collect data and never display ads.

This means that companies, such as two AdTech companies that track your activities on a different set of sites, can grab data from each other to consolidate the data and profiles they have on people. Consequently, companies participating in this ecosystem (or sometimes on their own) can sell your data to clients that may not be using it to try and sell you stuff. This is the unhealthy and unsustainable digital cycle that we live in.

Given these examples, it is not hard to imagine that your personal data can be used to influence the price of products and services proposed to you, particularly from companies and institutions.

So, let’s join forces together and, as a community, reclaim our freedom and get back ownership of your data. With Digital Twin, you are at the centre of your digital world. No one else.

Alexandre Hannelas

January 27, 2021

🔗So, how do I get a 3Node?

🔗So what is this Smart Contract for IT about?

🔗More than the average Smart Contract

🔗What makes Zero OS special?

🔗How does Zero OS apply to developers?

🔗Zero OS allows anyone to provide sovereign capacity

🔗ThreeFold is actually much more than a blockchain

🔗ThreeFold had no ICO nor IEO. It pre-farmed its tokens

🔗Product over Hype

🔗A better understanding of wealth

🔗Actually, you are the product

🔗Why should I care?

🔗Behind the scene

FEATURED POST

The Building Blocks of the Internet

March 4, 2024 - Emilie Ouwerx

ThreeFold stories and project info

How You Can Join the People's Internet

A Smart Contract for all IT workloads

How ThreeFold offers Data Sovereignty

A Scalable and Secure Operating System

ThreeFold’s Planet Positive Plan

Not your average blockchain project

A Better Understanding of Wealth

Actually, you are the product

Why should I care?

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FEATURED POSTS