The Latest from ThreeFold - Foundation

🔗How are ThreeFold Tokens created?

No ThreeFold Tokens have ever been minted. ThreeFold Tokens are generated through a process called “Farming”. Farming happens when active internet capacity is added to the ThreeFold Grid. Independent farmers earn ThreeFold Tokens (TFT) by providing neutral and decentralized internet capacity, thus expending the usable Grid. Therefore no central entity controls the internet.

🔗5 good reasons to buy ThreeFold Tokens

1. TFTs are exclusively generated when new capacity is added to the TF Grid. There are no centralized issuers. Tokens have not been created out of thin air.
2. While the ThreeFold Grid can expand, a maximum of 4 Billion TFTs can ever be in circulation. This limit ensures stability of value and incentivization for all stakeholders.
3. TFT lives on the Stellar Blockchain. TFT holders benefit from a big ecosystem of proven wallets and mediums of exchange.
4. By employing Stellar technology, TFT transactions and smart contracts are powered by one of the most energy-efficient blockchains available. Furthermore, TFT is the medium of exchange on the greenest internet network in the world.
5. The market for farming, cultivating and trading TFT is open to all. Anyone with internet connection, power supply and necessary hardware can become a Farmer or trade ThreeFold tokens (TFT).
6. By buying, holding, and utilizing ThreeFold Tokens, you are actively supporting the expansion of the ThreeFold Grid and its use cases — creating a more sustainable, fair, and equally accessible Internet.
   
   

To learn more about the token, please dive into our wiki.

Important note: TFTs are not an investment instrument. It is the medium of exchange on the ThreeFold Grid, and is a mechanism to enable the Internet we believe is possible.

🔗Internet capacity needs to become localized

A big majority of users in the world connect to servers that are not present in their region and as such experience higher costs and low performance. According to a study by datacentermap.com, 80% of the data centers of the current Internet’s service providers are based in the U.S. and Europe. The rest of the world has scarce Internet resources dotted around territories.

As a consequence most Internet users use Internet-based services running on infrastructure which is located far away from their physical location and most likely outside their country’s borders. This decreases the general end-user experience (latency) but also adds unnecessary costs to transporting the information back and forth. Also, it adds legislation and compliance headaches to enterprises.

Our mission is to empower and inspire people to recognize abundance by living new experiences one hour at a time.

🔗The Internet needs to perform better

Compute and Storage vendors create poor-performing solutions. There have been yearly improvements in hardware following Moore’s law. While this has allowed ThreeFold to progress and innovate, it has also led to software developers taking these advances for granted; cutting corners where they can, creating sub-optimal code and allowing software components to be layered on top of each other to achieve certain behavioral functionalities.

The inefficiencies have now led to a situation where organically-grown IT architectures are immensely complex. They use a variety of components from different software and hardware vendors integrated by so called ‘integrators’. The overall effort and cost involved to create, operate and maintain such architectures is growing continuously and requiring an ever-increasing budget and resourcing to continue.

If we could go down to the core algorithms and take another look at these, and innovate at the heart of technology instead of applying patches and pain killers, we would be able to create much more end-user capacity than what systems provide today. Systems will last longer and will not have to be replaced by faster ones. Also, fewer engineers will be needed to create, operate and maintain these systems. Combined, these elements would present a more stable and reliable platform that can achieve higher levels of uptime.

Only upsides, right? Well a huge downside of such an approach is that vendors will make less revenue and more importantly less margin as systems will run for longer, be more stable and require less updates. So why would vendors innovate at the core of their solution?

🔗The Internet needs to become more sustainable

Did you know that the current Internet is responsible for between 5 and 10% of global energy consumptions? Making it more harmful to our planet than the airline Industry. The good news is that we can achieve 10x more power efficiency by addressing certain areas such as storage.

ThreeFold believes IT can do a much better job at being more sustainable - in fact ThreeFold believes it can reduce the Internet’s carbon footprint by 10 times compared to other industry standards in IT capacity producing solutions.

Power consumption is a function of better compute and storage performance that in theory would require more racks and cooling. ThreeFold’s architectural approach brought solutions that enables it’s Farmers to achieve roughly 3 times the performance per rack (so it uses fewer racks) and the racks require less energy than typical racks in the industry.

Read more about how ThreeFold achieves sustainability in the following blog.

🔗The Internet needs to become more affordable

The biggest cost in running IT architectures is the human cost. Today’s complex systems, built out of ‘band aid and patches’ point solutions, organically-grown and badly documented IT infrastructures, need an armada of people to keep them ticking. Even though this is an example, one can learn a lot from the trends that are presented:

• On average an IT budget takes 5% of overall revenues
• IT consumes 6.5% of the total number of Full-time equivalent in the company, of which 85% are insourced and 15% on payroll. This means that the enterprise doesn’t retain internal know-how to operate their IT.
• About 50% of IT budgets are spent on Infrastructure ane operations. Similarly, a big part goes to applications. A mere 5% is considered to be internal overhead within the IT department.
• Around 65% of the IT budget is spent on resources and services, around 35% is spent on hardware and software.
  
  These figures present industry average numbers and paint a troubling picture that IT is a sizeable part of an overall budget, and that most spending is going to have the right knowledge skills insourced to the organisation to run the core IT architecture it relies on. For any other discipline in any organisation this would present an unacceptable risk to the business and its continuity - strangely not for IT.

🔗The Internet needs to become self-healing

The biggest source of downtime in computer systems is people. Getting people involved in fixing infrastructure problems creates the risk of accidentally causing more system downtime. A very recent example on this hit a large organisation cloud service provider.

20+ years ago when Internet data centers came into existence next to telecom points of presence (POP), the level of complication in architecting, and building and maintaining these infrastructures exploded. From an already reasonable complicated technology setup to transport packets of data around the globe, these information warehouses were created where data was uploaded to, processed, and the obtained results sent back to end users on the other side of the globe.

Managing a data center that contains solutions for information transportation, storage and processing is not an easy task and the growth of data volume uploaded, stored and processed has exponentially increased. The number of technologies invented and implemented in regards to the processing and storing of information has also exploded. This resulted in a double exponential growth in complexity to architect, build, operate and maintain these IT systems.

The time has come that we no longer rely on people to do the right thing in case of emergency - the complexity is overwhelming and the dependency on the availability of that information is huge. Having people to do manual deployments and operational responsibilities does not provide the agility and speed to keep up with the continuous exponential growth of the industry. It is time to take the human element out of IT and let smart and autonomous systems to take over. This will also let people focus on more creative activities.

🔗The world needs a responsible internet

On a humanitarian level the opportunities for creativity, learning and development are currently negatively influenced by a lack of access to performant and affordable Internet services. Since Internet access is a human right, it should protect the status quo between the developed and less-developed regions of our world.

🔗The Internet is growing fast, with the wrong solutions

It is evident that the current solutions are super unsustainable and make no sense. Luckily, ThreeFold and many other start-ups are deploying new solutions.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash.

🔗You are unique

During a gathering with some friends, I noticed something that made me think about how important it is what we’re doing at ThreeFold.

One of my friends was complaining about how he couldn’t log in to one of his social media platforms, because all of his passwords are different and he forgot which one he used for this particular platform. Another friend was saying how she tagged her sister on a funny meme, but her sister couldn’t find it on Facebook. Turns out she tagged her on Instagram. And then one of them said something that I keep hearing more and more from people, “Why do we have so many apps, I can’t find anything anymore!”

We exist so many times online, but why? There is only one me in the real world. Why should there not be only one me online? Why should I have 25 different profiles on 25 different platforms, with 25 different logins, when I am unique?

That is another dilemma that ThreeFold has a solution for, with its autonomous technology. 3Bot - a digital avatar like no other, that basically handles your entire online life. The focus lies on digital privacy, where only you can access your data, and no one else. The 3Bot has all the functionalities you need to interact and exchange information and value, there will be no need for that many applications on your device anymore. With 3Bot, everything changes.

The 3Bot is built on the ThreeFold Grid, and has the same values as ThreeFold. Freedom, Equality, and Sustainability. It is important that your data is safe, and what can be safer than you being the only one who not only has access to it, but also the only one who owns that data? Your online world should not be that different from your offline world. In your offline world, you are the center of your own life. That is what ThreeFold is doing with the 3Bot, putting you in the center of your online life, too.

One decentralized application, one digital wallet, one login and one you. Because you’re unique.

Have questions? Feel free to ask us on our forum!

Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash.

🔗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.

You can build your server (3node) and configure it, but also options for people with less technical knowledge are available. Please see pre-register.threefold.io to see how easy it is for anyone to become a ThreeFold Farmer.

Blog written in 2019, updated January 2021.

🔗Do you believe that the world needs change?

Do you believe in decentralization? Equality? Sustainability?

Do you believe in circular economies, where everyone is invited to partake and succeed?

The ThreeFold Token is the currency of the new Internet and brings true solutions to all the above questions.

It supports the ThreeFold Foundation - an open ecosystem that is shaping a better world by empowering game-changing technology. ThreeFold is growing a green and conscious peer-to-peer Internet that is available everywhere and owned by everyone – across geographical and cultural borders, empowering people to be autonomous, and providing equal chances to learn, partake and succeed.

🔗Ready to support a new Internet?

By buying and holding TFT, anyone can support the ThreeFold Foundation’s ability to achieve its next technological and growth milestones (see Token Distribution Event for use-cases). From funding the next technological innovations to supporting the growth of ThreeFold use-cases built on top of the ThreeFold Grid, TFT powers the expansion of the new Internet.

The time has come for us to step up and shape the world we believe is possible. Join us and lets co-create our futures together.

Get TFT on Liquid now.

Get TFT on BTC-Alpha now.

On behalf of our planet, humanity and the ThreeFold Community, we thank you for considering empowering a better world.

If you need more guidance on buying TFT, please head here.