ThreeFold

In recent years, we’ve witnessed a transformation in how energy is generated and distributed, marking a shift towards a more sustainable and democratic system. This change has been most notable in the transition from centralized energy production, particularly nuclear power, to decentralized solar energy. The latter empowers individuals and communities to produce their energy locally, an alternative to the traditional approach to power generation.

Similarly, the Internet landscape, typically dominated by massive data centers and centralized servers, is experiencing a shift towards decentralization. These movements share a common ethos to empower individuals and communities.

🔗The Rise of Decentralized Solar Energy

Decentralized solar energy has transformed the landscape of power generation. Unlike the centralized model, where nuclear power plants are often miles away from the end-users and controlled by large corporations or government bodies, solar energy allows for energy production right where it’s needed—at home or within the community.

By installing solar panels on rooftops or creating local solar farms, individuals can capture the sun’s energy directly. This shift not only reduces our dependency on distant power plants and the complex grid systems but also mitigates the risks associated with them.

This localized energy production model enhances sustainability by tapping into an inexhaustible natural resource and encourages a more environmentally conscious and self-sufficient society. It signifies a move away from the centralized, traditional systems of energy production, returning power to the people and prioritizing the planet’s well-being.

🔗ThreeFold: Pioneering a Decentralized Digital Future

Parallel to the energy sector’s evolution, the digital world is also undergoing a transformation, led by innovative platforms like ThreeFold. Just as decentralized solar energy provides an alternative to the centralized power generation model, ThreeFold is reshaping the cloud computing landscape with its autonomous edge cloud.

ThreeFold’s model deviates from the norm, where cloud services are dominated by a few massive data centers. Instead, we depend on our global network of independent nodes set up by individuals and businesses to contribute their own computing and storage resources to the cloud. This approach democratizes access to cloud resources, bolstering data privacy, security, and resilience against potential outages or cyberattacks.

Beyond merely disrupting the existing model, ThreeFold aims to foster a more sustainable, efficient, and user-centric internet. Distributing decentralized infrastructure worldwide reduces the environmental footprint associated with large data centers and promotes fairer internet resource distribution.

Both the shift towards decentralized solar energy and ThreeFold’s revolutionary approach to cloud computing reflect a broader movement towards decentralization. This movement is not just about bringing alternatives to existing systems but about creating a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future for all.

In an era where artificial intelligence is reshaping our technological landscape, it is imperative to reconsider how we design and operate data centers. With decades of experience in the Internet and Cloud space and in response to technological evolutions, ThreeFold is proposing a new approach.

Over the last 30 years, data center construction has largely remained static. Contemporary data centers risk becoming obsolete if they continue to neglect evolving needs. As we stand at this technological crossroads, the urgency to adapt is clear: unless we pay close attention, new data centers risk repeating the inefficiencies of their predecessors, leading to a poor utilization of investments and a significant mismatch with current and future requirements.

🔗The Two Main Flaws of Existing Data Centers

🔗Inadequate Power Provision

The advent of AI has dramatically escalated power needs. An AI-centric rack can consume up to 200 kW – a staggering 15 times more than the capacity of data centers built in the conventional model. This exponential increase poses significant challenges, particularly when dissipation exceeds 50 kW per rack. Traditional designs fall short in crucial aspects like cooling and power distribution, with conventional air cooling methods becoming increasingly unviable.

🔗The Shift in Market Needs: Beyond Co-location

The market dynamics have evolved; selling space in a data center, akin to ‘advanced real estate’, is a model that is rapidly losing relevance. The traditional co-location framework, which expects customers to manage their hardware and infrastructure within leased rack space, is becoming antiquated.

In the modern landscape, the role of a data center should transcend mere space rental. The emphasis should be on providing integrated solutions – selling compute, storage, and network capacity, not just rackspace and power. It’s about delivering a comprehensive service that aligns with the complex, ever-evolving needs of businesses immersed in the digital and AI revolution.

🔗The Data Center Landscape Today

Tier 3 and Tier 4 Data Centers are classifications outlined by the Uptime Institute, which provide standards for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. The Institute defines four tiers (1, 2, 3, & 4) to categorize data centers according to their design and infrastructure capabilities. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the top two tiers.

🔗Tier 3

A Tier 3 Data Center is a type of data center facility that is designed to provide a high level of availability and redundancy for IT infrastructure and data storage.

🔗Key Characteristics

Availability: Tier 3 Data Centers typically offer 99.982% availability, translating to around 1.6 hours of downtime per year.
Redundancy: They feature N+1 redundancy for power and cooling systems, providing backup components to ensure continuous operation in case of failure.
Concurrent Maintenance: Tier 3 Data Centers allow for maintenance and repairs to be performed on systems without disrupting operations.
Cost: Tier 3 Data Centers are less expensive to build and operate compared to Tier 4 due to lower redundancy requirements.

It’s important to note that while Tier 3 Data Centers provide a high level of availability and redundancy, they are not as robust as Tier 4 Data Centers, which are designed to provide even higher levels of fault tolerance and uptime. The choice of data center tier depends on the specific needs and risk tolerance of the organization using the facility.

🔗Key Challenges

Limited Uptime: Despite high reliability, Tier 3 Data Centers may still experience noticeable downtime, which could impact critical operations.
Single Points of Failure: While designed for redundancy, Tier 3 Data Centers may still have single points of failure, potentially leading to downtime during component failures.
Scalability: They may have limitations in scalability compared to higher tier data centers, potentially requiring more significant upgrades for expansion.

When a business is considering colocation or hosting in a Tier 3 Data Center, it’s important to assess its power requirements carefully. For operations with high power demands, it might be necessary to discuss with the data center provider the possibilities of allocating additional power resources or choosing a high-density zone within the data center. Data center providers typically measure power in kilowatts (kW) per rack and will have different pricing models based on the power and cooling requirements of the equipment hosted.

🔗Tier 4

A Tier 4 Data Center is the most advanced type of data center tier, as classified by the Uptime Institute. The Tier 4 Data Center is the most robust and less prone to failures. Its design ensures redundancy and reliability.

🔗Key Characteristics

Availability: Tier 4 Data Centers offer the highest level of availability, typically guaranteeing 99.995% uptime or just around 26.3 minutes of downtime per year.
Fault Tolerance: They feature a fault-tolerant design with 2N+1 redundancy for critical systems, ensuring uninterrupted operation even during component failures.
Redundancy: Tier 4 Data Centers have redundant power and cooling distribution paths, eliminating single points of failure.
Security: They often have advanced security measures in place, including biometric access controls and surveillance systems.

🔗Key Challenges

Complexity: Tier 4 Data Centers are more complex and expensive to design, build, and maintain due to their fault-tolerant architecture.
High Cost: The increased redundancy and fault tolerance come with higher costs, making Tier 4 Data Centers more expensive to operate compared to lower tiers.
Overkill for Some Applications: For organizations with less critical operations or smaller budgets, Tier 4 Data Centers may be overkill and not cost-effective.

🔗Choosing Between Tier 3 and Tier 4

Cost vs. Need: Tier 4 Data Centers are significantly more expensive to build and operate. Organizations should assess whether they need the highest level of uptime and fault tolerance that Tier 4 provides.
Business Requirements: Businesses that can afford occasional downtimes for maintenance or those that don’t have extremely critical data operations may find Tier 3 facilities adequately sufficient.
Industry Compliance: Certain industries may require or favor Tier 4 facilities due to regulatory requirements.

In summary, while both Tier 3 and Tier 4 Data Centers are designed to ensure high levels of uptime and reliability, Tier 4 takes this a step further with increased redundancy, fault tolerance, and a correspondingly higher price point.

🔗Introducing the Tier S Data Center

The Tier S model is designed to exceed the capabilities of traditional Tier 3 and 4 Data Centers, addressing the increasing demand for infrastructure that can support emerging IT workloads with greater efficiency and resilience. Where “S” stands for “Self-Healing,” Tier S Data Centers present a new way forward, while remaining backwards compatible.

The Tier S “circular approach” allows us to build the most reliable and redundant data centers in the world. A larger data center (typically 2-10 mW capacity) is extended with at least nine edge data centers. Key features include advanced liquid cooling technology and cybersecurity mechanisms, enhancing the center’s ability to handle complex IT workloads like AI and ML.

Flexibility is central to the design, with each edge data center capable of housing 3-30 pods (subsections), and a versatile main data center. The innovative self-healing technology ensures continuous, secure operations, reducing downtime and maintenance needs. The infrastructure, integrating state-of-the-art hydro coolant distribution units, is designed for high-performance computing, meeting emerging technological demands.

🔗Key Benefits

Superior Reliability: Data storage is highly secure and can’t be lost, would even be safe if quantum computing would be used for hacking.
100% Redundancy: Fully redundant power and network paths. All hardware is equipped with liquid cooling for enhanced reliability and energy-efficiency..
Capacity and Expansion: A main data center with a 2-10 MW capacity, supplemented by at least 9 edge data centers.
Flexible Configuration: Each edge data center can include 3 to 30 pods (more information below), with the main data centers configurable as pod, rack, or container-based.
Disaster Resilience: The circular design, with a main data center and edge data centers, offers robust protection against natural disasters, war, or unrest.
Self-Healing: Equipped with self-healing properties, Tier S Data Centers ensure that workloads can operate safely with minimal need for human intervention.

🔗In Conclusion

The existing data center model is simply insufficient for emerging demands of the IT world. Billions of dollars will be mis-spent if we continue down the existing path. This is why ThreeFold is presenting a new approach. While the Tier S Data Center is still in its conceptual phase, we are actively working with partners on implementing the first of its kind in the near future.

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, diversity and inclusion are not just buzzwords; they are essential components for driving innovation and progress. As the tech and IT sectors continue to shape the future, it’s crucial to recognize the importance of fostering diverse perspectives and creating inclusive environments where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute.

At ThreeFold, we are deeply committed to promoting diversity and inclusion within our ecosystem and beyond. We believe that diversity fuels creativity and innovation, bringing us closer to our goal of building a more sustainable and equitable digital future for all. By embracing individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, we enrich our community and empower voices that might otherwise go unheard.

🔗ThreeFold x H.E.R DAO

On Monday, ThreeFold and H.E.R DAO, a women-centered developer DAO with a focus on inclusivity, joined forces to host a meetup in Dar Es Salaam, attracting over 50 students, developers, and tech enthusiasts. Read more about the event.

H.E.R DAO has already established a presence in East Africa, aiming to diversify the blockchain ecosystem and uplift marginalized communities through initiatives like Hackathons and conferences. Their mission focuses on fostering WEB 3 adoption and empowering individuals across the continent. Discover more

This collaboration sent a powerful message that diversity is not just a goal to strive for but a necessity for driving meaningful change in the tech industry. Together, we laid the groundwork for future collaborations and initiatives that will continue to champion diversity, inclusion, and empowerment in the digital space in Tanzania.

Moreover, our commitment to diversity and inclusion extends beyond partnerships; it is embedded in our initiatives like Dunia Yetu. Through Dunia Yetu, we aim to empower women and youth in Tanzania by providing access to education, opportunities, and resources in the tech sector. By fostering diversity and inclusion in Tanzania’s digital ecosystem, we can unlock the untapped potential of women and youth, driving economic growth and innovation.

Each step forward brings us closer to realizing our vision of a more inclusive and equitable technology industry, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive, regardless of background or identity. Discover our Dunia Yetu initiative and follow our latest developments.

🔗Vision of Collective Empowerment

In the heart of Tanzania, a transformative movement is underway, known as Dunia Yetu, Swahili for “Our World.”. More than just a name; it embodies a vision of collective empowerment and digital self-reliance. Dunia Yetu is a beacon of unity, encouraging Tanzanians to take control of their digital destiny. It seeks to redefine the nation’s digital landscape, fostering a future where citizens are not just users but architects of their online world.

🔗Empowering Tanzania’s Youth and Future

At its core, Dunia Yetu is about empowering Tanzanians to reclaim ownership of their digital infrastructure. It envisions a future where the benefits of the Internet are harnessed by the people, for the people. For millions of Tanzanians, Dunia Yetu could represent more than just connectivity; it’s a gateway to education, opportunity, and economic empowerment. By democratizing access to the Internet, Dunia Yetu will open doors for entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration, especially for the youth. With this project, Tanzania’s youth are empowered to shape their digital future, harnessing technology to overcome challenges and seize opportunities. It’s not just about connectivity; it’s about unlocking the full potential of Tanzania’s next generation.

🔗Looking Ahead to 2024:

As Dunia Yetu gains momentum, stay tuned for exciting updates and milestones. In 2024, this transformative project will see the light, ushering in a new era of digital empowerment for Tanzania.

Together, through Dunia Yetu, Tanzanians are building a brighter, more inclusive future—one where the digital world truly belongs to us all.

In today’s digital landscape, the development of a decentralized open-source Internet infrastructure marks a significant leap forward. However, while the foundational structure of this innovation brings promise, its inherent reliability isn’t guaranteed. After more than five years of building and expanding the open-source ThreeFold Grid, it’s now time we pivot towards commercialization. Ensuring a robust, dependable, and trustworthy offering becomes paramount. In this post, we’ll share the various ways that the ThreeFold Grid is and will become reliable.

🔗Technical Redundancy

Our quantum safe storage ystem, coupled with replication, and web gateways, presents a pathway to achieve technical redundancy already. While these capabilities exist, we admit that at this time it is too complex for a starting user. Making this easier through refined tooling and a strong user experience will be imperative in order to allow a wide audience to take advantage here.

🔗ThreeFold Cloud

Our upcoming commercial offering, TF Cloud, will bolster reliability and trustworthiness. Through TF Cloud, we will need to provide comprehensive service, robust support, service level agreements (SLAs), and streamlined payment methods, including credit card options. The development of user-friendly tooling will significantly simplify and easen the process as well, enabling users to deploy and maintain reliable workloads effortlessly.

🔗Farming Pools

The introduction of farming pools in TF Grid 4.x will play an important role in fostering reliability as well. These pools not only contribute to resource pooling but also offer visibility into the network’s participants. This transparency enhances trust and aids in identifying reliable contributors within a decentralized framework.

🔗Establishing Reputation and Transparency

Building a system that emphasizes reputation and complete visibility regarding service levels and uptimes is pivotal. By offering insights into each participant’s performance metrics, Grid users will be able to more effectively choose a trusted provider.

In essence, through a combination of technical and strategic advancements, our journey towards a dependable and trustworthy decentralized Internet infrastructure is underway, setting the stage for the next phase of ThreeFold.

In the next phase of ThreeFold, we are focused on utilization and commercialization. With this comes a requirement for our project to establish reliable and trusted systems that allow anyone to enter the ecosystem with confidence.

One effective mechanism gaining traction for decentralized governance is the cooperative model. Cooperatives represent a tried and tested form of collective organization, emphasizing democratic governance and equitable distribution of benefits among members.

🔗So, what exactly is a cooperative?

The International Cooperative Alliance defines a cooperative as an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise.

Cooperatives operate under a set of shared principles—voluntary and open membership, democratic member control, economic participation by members, autonomy and independence, education, training, and information, cooperation among cooperatives, and concern for the community. These principles underpin the resilience and effectiveness of cooperatives as governance models.

🔗The ThreeFold Cooperative

ThreeFold will establish a 100% owned subsidiary of the Cooperative within a chosen jurisdiction to open the doors to innovative mechanisms. Through this subsidiary, the creation of Farming Pools becomes feasible, providing a controlled environment for token transactions aligned with defined governance protocols unique to each Farming Pool.

One crucial aspect is the inclusivity within this cooperative framework. Every farmer contributing resources and every buyer purchasing IT capacity from the network becomes an integral part of this cooperative, fostering a sense of ownership and shared responsibility.

This cooperative structure revolutionizes the way participants interact within a decentralized network. It ensures that governance mechanisms are not only defined but also upheld by all stakeholders, aligning actions with the collective vision.

Embracing a cooperative model introduces a well-established framework for decentralized governance. By leveraging its proven principles and structures, it fosters inclusivity, democratic decision-making, and shared ownership—a recipe for fostering trust, equity, and sustainability within decentralized systems.

As we navigate the complex landscape of decentralized technologies, cooperatives stand as a beacon of collaborative and democratic governance, offering a robust foundation for a truly decentralized future.

Learn more about our next phase.

In 2023, we had the pleasure of hosting two summits in Zanzibar – one in July and another in November, named the Africa Regenerative Future Summit. These events brought together leading innovators and investors committed to advancing human flourishing, with a specific emphasis on science and technology shaping the trajectory of Africa’s future.

During the inaugural summit in July, Zanzibar’s President, Dr. Hussein Mwinyi, honored us with his presence. In a formal declaration, he publicly expressed the government’s dedication to establishing a digital free zone, a locally-owned Internet infrastructure, and an incubator to support young local innovators – all in collaboration with ThreeFold – and their commitment to the ICT sector as a whole.

The second summit saw the birth of Dunia Yetu (meaning “Our World” in Swahili), a collaborative movement forged in partnership with a cohort of tech developers and innovators from Dar Es Salaam. This initiative is driven by a shared commitment to reshape the digital landscape in Tanzania and Africa. Its goals include empowering coders, fostering economic development, and constructing a sovereign, autonomous digital ecosystem for a more promising digital future.

Looking ahead to 2024, our vision includes a continued series of gatherings focused on OurWorld, ThreeFold, and other projects and individuals prioritizing a planet-first, people-first approach to support Tanzania and the broader African continent.

More information:

Summit I: Read Zanzibar Seeks to Become a Digital FreeZone (via The Citizen) and Mwinyi Commits to Improvement of Digital Spaces (via Daily News Tanzania) for further details.
Summit II: Learn more about Dunia Yetu
Dunia Yetu: Read Sovereign Internet - A game changer for Tanzania (via The Citizen)

Imagine this: two friends in East Africa trying to connect via a video call. Instead of a direct link, their data embarks on a round trip to far-off data centers, consuming resources and adding costs. It’s a snippet of a larger issue—how centralized infrastructure is holding back progress in connectivity.

🔗Breaking the Distance Barrier

In many regions, the internet economy remains anchored in distant lands due to reliance on long cables to Europe, North America, or China, where colossal data centers reside. This scenario keeps data, jobs, and economic benefits outside developing regions. But what if connectivity was local, decentralized, and efficient?

🔗The East Africa Example

Picture our technology in action. Instead of relying on data centers thousands of miles away, our decentralized infrastructure brings the connection closer. Those friends in East Africa can communicate peer-to-peer, reducing bandwidth needs by up to 10 times while boosting security. This isn’t just about video calls; it’s about revolutionizing every digital interaction.

🔗Streamlining Complexity

The tech world often gets tangled in layers of abstraction, favoring integration over innovation. While layers aid compatibility and incremental progress, they hinder true change. Excessive abstraction results in inefficiencies, performance lags, increased costs, and scalability woes.

🔗The Education Gap

Innovation takes a back seat when education leans heavily on commercial technologies. The push for quick-fix solutions neglects long-term innovation. It’s like opting for a painkiller instead of addressing the root cause of the problem.

🔗Local, Secure, Reliable

Our vision? A decentralized internet where compute, storage, and network are local, sovereign, and secure. Storage becomes more reliable with less overhead, doubling up as a global content delivery network. The network stays resilient, routes around issues, encrypts end-to-end, and knows precisely where data originates and ends.

🔗Tackling the Root Issues

By constructing a decentralized, autonomous internet infrastructure from scratch, we’re tackling these issues head-on. Minimizing complexity while solving problems at their core is our mantra. It’s not just about a tech revolution; it’s about reshaping connectivity to be inclusive, efficient, and empowering for everyone, everywhere.

The digital world stands at a crossroads. We can either perpetuate the status quo, or we can pave a new path—one that’s decentralized, efficient, and equitable. The time for a decentralized internet that solves problems at their roots is now. It’s time for connectivity that knows no boundaries.

The power to transform connectivity is in our hands. Let’s reimagine the internet not as a distant entity but as a network that thrives locally, serves globally, and empowers universally. Together, let’s build a decentralized internet that propels us into a future where connectivity is a right, not a privilege.