🔗What is Peer-to-Peer?

Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a term that originated from the distributed computer application architecture where tasks and workloads are shared between peers, popularized by Napster, a revolutionary file storing system from the late 1990s.

The concept inspired new structures and philosophies in many areas of human interaction. P2P systems and groups are typically critical of authoritarian and centralized social structures and believe in equality, meritocracy, flat systems, participatory & circular economies, as the concept represents a concrete pathway to these outcomes or visions.

P2P systems are network, not linear or ‘pyramidal’ hierarchies (though they may share some elements). They are ‘distributed’, though they may have elements of ‘centralization’ and ‘decentralization.’ And intelligence is not located at any center, but everywhere within the system.

🔗How does ThreeFold relate to peer-to-peer?

ThreeFold’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing network is a distributed architecture that splits tasks and workloads between its peers, ThreeFold Farmers. Farmers are equal participants in the network and together they form a peer-to-peer network of nodes, the ThreeFold Grid.

Farmers make their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. Farmers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client-server model in which the consumption and supply of resources is divided.

In the near future, ThreeFold will create Digital Twin, which will go beyond the era of peers doing similar things while sharing resources. It will actually enable much more than that. Digital Twin will create a complete new digital world with diverse peers that can bring in unique resources and capabilities to a virtual community on the ThreeFold Grid. This will empower the network of peers to engage in greater tasks beyond those that can be accomplished by individual peers, and are beneficial to all the peers.

🔗Why did ThreeFold choose peer-to-peer? 

Everything starts (or should start) from the why, and the ThreeFold story started a long time ago. Before the inception of ThreeFold, many of the co-founders of the project used to work with the largest IT & Cloud actors. Throughout their experience working in the Industry, they realized that the complexity of the technology and the centralization of knowledge & power led to an inefficient, unsustainable, not scalable and unequally distributed infrastructure. So they decided to redesign the whole Internet and cloud infrastructure bottom-up with the vision of shaping a global internet economy that can scale anywhere efficiently, cost efficiently and sustainably. 

🔗Why does the world needs peer-to-peer? 

By developing the technology, the conviction that peer-to-peer was the best solution for humanity and the planet strengthened itself. Why? Well, put simply, a peer-to-peer system removes all forms of intermediaries, unnecessary steps and complexity from the picture. Therefore, it simplifies the architecture in an incredible way. The benefits are many but here are the most popular benefits:

• Privacy: Our peer-to-peer environment means no middlemen or intermediaries, meaning data travels directly between peers and stored on the nodes of their choice rather than being sent through and stored by a third party.
• Security: Data stored in data centers is susceptible to security breaches. In bypassing data centers and exchanging data directly between peers, we can achieve much greater security as it reduces code and back doors significantly. 
• Scalability: In a many-to-many system, scale is essentially unlimited. There is simply no bottleneck. And hardware (nodes) can be added at ease compared to current data center model.
• Cost-efficiency & Sustainability: End-to-end (direct) connection between peers means a more efficient path for data and less energy is needed. Less energy means less cost, and less harm to our planet.

Peer-to-peer systems, like ThreeFold’s decentralized network, represent a transformative step towards a more efficient, secure, and equitable digital world. By removing intermediaries and relying on distributed resources, P2P networks offer unmatched privacy, scalability, and sustainability. As the world continues to evolve, embracing peer-to-peer solutions will be essential for building a fairer, more resilient digital infrastructure—one that empowers individuals and communities to thrive without relying on traditional centralized models.

🔗The neutrality of the current Internet is in danger.

Have you seen ‘The Great Hack’ on Netflix? It’s a documentary about the Cambridge Analytica hacking scandal, where personal data of millions of peoples’ Facebook profiles were harvested without their consent and used for political advertising purposes.

While watching it, I couldn’t help but think how unfair it is that in today’s digital society, people are being treated like products, because there is no such thing as a ‘free’ platform without YOU being the product. What did reassure me, is that people are sick of having their data used this way. But what they might not know, is that the internet problem is bigger than ‘just’ data protection.

The Internet is growing at an exponential rate. To service this demand, a few large companies (Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook, etc.) have built and continue to build supersized, power-hungry and centralized data centers. These data centers make up the majority of all Internet capacity available today. However, the Internet is expanding much faster than datacenters and the planet can cope with.

In addition to that, the Internet is extremely centralized, with most of these data centers being located in the US. Think of it like electricity. If consumers in, for example, Turkey had to use electricity generated in the US, it would be too expensive and inefficient, because it is too far away. The transmission lines would be too strained and losses and repairs would make it unsustainable. Capacity is like electricity. When centralized, it becomes too expensive and wasteful for remote users.

🔗So what is the solution to these problems?

The Internet needs to be more distributed, cost-effective, neutral, and sustainable. ThreeFold has developed such a new technology, the ThreeFold Grid (Grid) and a token which enables all this to happen.

Combining the values of the ThreeFold Foundation (freedom, equality and fairness) with the technology developed by TFTech (Zero-OS, Zero-Chain, 3Bot) and a digital currency called the ThreeFold Token (a decentralized digital currency and means of payment to exchange autonomous and decentralized Internet services) we believe that we have all the tools in order to actually make a difference in tomorrow’s digital world. Question is, are you ready to join us?

Please visit our forum if you have any questions or would like to continue the conversation!

🔗Decentralization

In 1989, the Internet changed the world as we know it with the introduction of the World Wide Web. With time the Internet empowered people to share information in a decentralized way. Shortly after, big companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple emerged, providing many solutions that revolutionized the way we live. The “sharing economy” has grown exponentially over the last 5-10 years. This is thanks to a more simplified information flow and well-developed technology, which:

• Enables a much easier integration of independent players into the sharing economy.
• Eliminates the need for extensive management and structure of marketplace operators.

We are entering a flat-structure economy. An economy where fewer managerial levels are needed for the system to function. New technologies such as blockchain and the Internet of Things facilitate this ongoing trend. Participants can now interact on a peer-to-peer basis, forming marketplaces and organizations according to pre-agreed, programmed contracts.

🔗The current Internet is centralized

Despite the growth in popularity for decentralized systems, organizations, and currencies, the Internet remains centralized. The centralization within the Internet industry brought many barriers to entry. Indeed, to compete in the highly competitive market of Internet capacity dominated by big IT companies, massive investment, and IT development are needed.

But what is really scary is that the current industry exploits the market tremendously. Data is officially the most valuable asset on earth for a few years, and about 20 companies rule over more than 80% of the cloud industry. In other words - these companies together have more than 80% of the world’s information. In recent years, we noticed the dangers that can arise with the wrong intentions within the data industry with the ‘Cambridge Analytica Scandal’, also highlighted in the movie ‘The Great Hack’.

ThreeFold has been developing technology that allows the decentralization of the Internet infrastructure - removing the need for data centers, and allowing anyone to take part in the Internet capacity market. Adding capacity to the ThreeFold Grid (TF Grid) makes you a ThreeFold Farmer (TF Farmer). The more decentralized the Internet gets, the more secure and effective it will become. The already is the largest grid of compute and storage in the world.

🔗How To Participate

The process of becoming a ThreeFold Farmer is very straightforward. Anyone can join the ThreeFold Grid by downloading the ThreeFold Zero-OS onto their nodes and connecting them to the ThreeFold Grid.

By doing this you will become an operator of a “micro data center” and with that earn ThreeFold Tokens. With or without experience in the field, anyone can become a ThreeFold Farmer. By becoming a ThreeFold Farmer, you empower a new neutral Internet that belongs to humanity - not corporations.

Blog written in 2019, updated January 2021.