The SAFE network: Giving a decentralised internet back to the people

The internet has become a large part of everyday life, approximately 40% of the world’s population has a connection, and we use it in a myriad of different ways. Communication, financial transactions, education, research, real-time updates, online bookings, job searches, blogging, shopping, and storage all add to an ever-increasing amount of digitized information.

Online platforms such as Google and Facebook  use some of this data to enhance their platforms, and provide more personally relevant services. Facebook uses data to communicate with users, fine-tune its offerings, and provide more personalised content and advertising. Google uses it to associate users with certain interests or demographics, as a basis for targeted advertising.

Facebook earned US$5.6 billion from advertising in the last three months of 2015, up 57% on the year before. Google made just over US$19b, up 17%.

"Our very strong revenue growth in Q4 reflects the vibrancy of our business, driven by mobile search as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising, all areas in which we’ve been investing for many years.”
— – Ruth Porat, Alphabet CFO

According to Gemalto, a leader in digital security, over 3.6 billion digital records have been stolen since 2013. Identity and personal information is the most commonly stolen, accounting for 53 percent of data breaches, while healthcare and government supersede retail as the most-targeted sectors.

“If consumers’ entire personal data and identities are being co-opted again and again by cyber thieves, trust will increasingly become the centerpiece in the calculus of which companies they do business with," said Jason Hart, the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Protection at Gemalto.

Companies and bad actors are not the only entities to take advantage of the wealth of information shared on the internet. Governments around the globe are attempting to enact legislation that would allow them to legally monitor our internet usage, with a view to reducing criminal activity and terrorism.

Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, who vice-chair the US Senate Intelligence Select Committee, allegedly authored a draft bill that was leaked recently. The Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 would demand any person or company that makes or programs a communications product in the United States provide law enforcement with any data, in an "intelligible format" when presented with a court order.

The bill follows a recent refusal from tech giant Apple to help the FBI break into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, and would require companies to either build a backdoor into their encryption systems, or use an encryption method that can be broken by a third party.

“The U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.”
— – Apple

This ever expanding mountain of data is commonly stored on centralised servers, in data centers across the globe. “While servers are not the underlying reason for these problems, these centralised points of weakness enable various organisations to promote their own agendas at the expense of the security and privacy of the World’s 3.3 billion connected users,” state’s Nick Lambert, Chief Operating Officer at MaidSafe.

Conceptualised in 2006, by Scottish engineer David Irvine, MaidSafe may provide a solution to the complex issues faced by internet users. The company is responsible for designing the SAFE (Secure Access For Everyone) Network, which uses peer-to-peer technology that joins together the spare computing capacity of its users, creating a global decentralised network.

“Due to company and government surveillance, online privacy is almost a thing of the past and can only currently be achieved by using a complex set of tools.”
— – Nick Lambert, MaidSafe Chief Operating Officer

Despite global events such as; the rise of Bitcoin, the revelations by Edward Snowden, or the even more recent western government focus on encryption, Irvine came across the problem of securing data through the perspective of a small business.

In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s Irvine was working as a consultant to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These companies can find it challenging to administer and manage their business data, let alone secure it. An SME often doesn’t have the resources to permanently hire someone with a technical background and the appropriate skills.

“It was during this period that David realised that the question he should be asking himself is not ‘How do we make servers more secure?’,” Lambert explains. “Trying to secure data on insecure networks was a futile exercise and servers were a big part of the problem. The question then became: ‘How do you remove servers from the management of our data?’.”

SAFE can be thought of as a crowd-sourced Internet. When you contribute to the network, you allow it to store encrypted pieces of other people’s files onto your computer.

The platform addresses privacy by implementing three distinct data security stages. The first is an algorithm encrypting the data before it reaches the network. Keying material is produced using the data within each file, providing the user with secure access. This encryption is applied by the client, prior to data chunking and dispersal.

The second stage is implemented by the MaidSafe protocol. The already encrypted files are chunked and then further secured with the Encrypt Library. This is not an encryption algorithm per se, but an algorithm that utilises existing security algorithms, predominantly AES 256.

Thirdly, the protocol distributes the chunks across the decentralized network, choosing the geographic storage locations randomly. This is performed by an algorithm which ensures a minimum physical distance between each chunk.

“The current approach is toward making everything as simple as possible, a couple of clicks to install is our ultimate aim as opposed to a complex series of configuration options.

• Lambert

The MaidSafe team use a variety of approaches in the developments process. During research orientated development, an engineer will produce a detailed design document, which the rest of the team can collaborate on. The team breaks down more specific pieces of dedicated work into sprints, which allow any developer to claim a task and begin work.

The relatively small development team supplements their manpower with a bounty program, where developers can earn bitcoin rewards. The core team is also geographically dispersed, which Lambert describes as challenging. “Being able to involve the wider community in developing the network has been really good to see.”

Viv Rajkumar, Chief Technology Officer at MaidSafe, has been pivotal in making remote development work, using the likes of Slack and Jira to keep the team up to date. The last few months have been focused upon delivering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as quickly as possible.

The MVP will enable users to install the software and connect to the network from their computer, store and retrieve files, browse sites hosted on the SAFE Network, and message other users.

MaidSafe conducted a client test in late February, which enabled users to connect to the test network, create their own credentials, put and store data, including websites. Users were also invited to create their own site using a demo template.

75% of the team’s engineering capacity has been focused on collating feedback, peer programming to redress unanticipated observed behaviour and delivering a stable, functioning network that behaves as expected.

“The testing was well received and feedback from the community enabled us to upgrade and improve the client.”
— – Lambert

Subsequent development sprints will see the addition of other extremely important features, such as Safecoin, the fuel that drives the network. Safecoins will provide access to the networks services and applications.

MaidSafe already has developers working on projects that utilise the SAFE Network. One of which is Project Decorum, a decentralised social platform founded and developed by Harmen Klink. The platform aims to deliver the freedom to organise and shape digital social activity in exactly the way that a user wants, without a third party looking over their shoulder.

“The SAFE network can provide every type of web service that exists on today’s centralised Internet, from video streaming, encrypted messaging, VOIP, storage and collaboration, exchanges, etc.”
— – Lambert