 You're watching The Daily Decrypt. Welcome to currency competition. I am your host, Amanda B. Johnson, and today's episode is brought to you by the Merkle. Could a digital currency, a cryptocurrency run without a blockchain? Such was my question for Madesafe's Paige Peterson. Without any further ado, here she is. Well, Paige Peterson from Madesafe. Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do at Madesafe before we dig on into the software. My name is Paige. I've been working at Madesafe for almost two years now doing communication and outreach and kind of community building. I was doing a little bit of web development, but kind of have been focusing more on the outreach, especially now as we're starting to introduce actual software that that role will be heightened a lot. So yeah, essentially I'm communications, go to events and speak at events and talk to interested parties, users that would want to use the network just to, you know, store data and whatnot, but also for developers that want to build on top of the platform. Right on. Well, then let's get, as you said, some releases have been coming out. Let's get a status update as of today of what is available to use as far as Madesafe software goes and what is it actually doing right now versus what it's what may be available in a month, two months. Right. So a couple weeks ago, I guess two weeks ago from yesterday we released the official launcher, which is essentially the user interface to connect to the network. So we haven't yet released the actual, you know, client for hosting a node on the network itself. Right now it's in a testing phase. So part of that testing phase is being able to have the team control of all of the nodes, which is about 50 nodes right now. They've been going they've been saying in between 50 and 100 but I think right now it's at 50. And kind of just getting that all squared off before releasing it into the wild essentially and letting anyone host a node on the network. It makes it a lot easier to, you know, wipe the whole network and kind of start over and some critical bugs in that before we want to launch the, you know, user hosted nodes. So we released essentially what is the client node. So they're in the Madesafe network. There's two different nodes. There's the client node and a network node and network node is the nodes that are hosting and routing data. And then the client node is one that the user the client interacts with. So if you're, if you're wanting to host node host data and also interact with the network with your own data, then you would essentially be running two different nodes. There's a client node and a network node. So we released the client node part. That's essentially what it is. And then yesterday we released the API, the beginnings of the API so that developers can start working with the network that exists right now. So it's still closed off, but you'll, you can essentially start building apps or integrating existing apps so that it uses the storage capabilities of the network. So there's a very minimal API right now. It'll obviously expand as we add more features such as messaging and whatnot, but it's definitely it's ready to go and we definitely want to see some developers start playing with it as soon as they feel comfortable. It's, it's pretty easy to understand because there's not a ton that you can do without some of the features that we plan on integrating and then your future, but it's essentially being able to put data to the network, you know, authenticate, have a user authenticate to the network, retrieve their data, store new data, public or private data, things like that. So that's essentially what we have right now. And then the next step is, you know, obviously fixing bugs and various things, but the next main step is getting the network nodes able to be hosted by users. It'll still be a test network at that point. And we'll still have kind of some logging capabilities that will be removed when there's kind of more official launch of the network. But it'll still, we'll be in a test for a little bit, a little bit launchable. So I have a question. So I registered an ID. I got the launcher, right? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, cool. So even though it's technically still in testing, like, like my ID, will it stay or is my ID going to be wiped and I'll have to re-register it and hope that someone else doesn't take the daily decrypt? So the first, if you installed it like in the first week or something, so it could have even been wiped again, but yeah, it's been wiped at least once and perhaps twice. So kind of plan on a weekly wipe until essentially the nodes are hosted by users because you can't really wipe the network when the nodes are hosted by users. So yeah. Well, this leads me into the main, the meat that I wanted to talk about today because I just find, I really have no idea how to even envision the made safe, as you may or may not know, viewer. There exists a made safe coin which was used primarily as like a funding vehicle and to represent ownership in the network's usefulness when it launched in the future. Made safe coin is a colored coin on Bitcoin living on the master coin protocol. And when, when was that launched page remind me? So we did the crowdfunding whole thing in April of 2014, so almost two years ago. Okay, so two years ago this colored Bitcoin was created and its value ever since has been reflected in people's anticipation of what the made safe networks value and usability would be. And so I meet Paige at Liberty Forum a couple of months ago and she, I actually went to your presentation page and I was going to like ask a question in the Q&A saying like, so how will this colored Bitcoin, this made safe coin be usable on the made safe peer to peer network protocol itself? But before we can even ask that question, you basically said, oh, and by the way, like made safe coins as they exist as colored Bitcoins now are intended to be like basically burnable transferable for this thing called safe coin, which is a blockchain less currency intended for the made safe network. Like, how does that you lie page you lie. No, it's true. So essentially. Yeah, so to reiterate the people that own made safe coin right now when the safe coin at you know the network is live and the safe coin is implemented, it will essentially be a trade one for one so you'll get one safe coin for one made safe coin. That'll be perhaps a complicated process. I don't know. I don't know the exact details of how we're going to do it, but it's essentially like that it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be too hard. Maybe it might be a little bit of manual efforts during that during while everyone's kind of doing it all at once, but who knows. So to get to safe coin. It's essentially using the, the language and the routing on the safe network to to move the the safe coin around so we don't use a blockchain at all for anything. So all of the data on the network is treated very similar. So the way that you would perhaps give someone else permission to to view a piece of data that you have stored on the network would be a very similar process that you would have of sending a piece of safe coin to another person. So instead of getting a global consensus, you're using this essentially new consensus that we've built which is based off of the network infrastructure, which is a DHT. So it's essentially a DHT is a distributed hash table, and that means that it's a table of hashes where the hashes are distributed so not everyone has every hash it's like localized. You only store what you need to know essentially so you're only storing information about nodes that are kind of nearby you in this in this network and whenever I say nearby in the in the sense it's not geographically nearby it's nearby in the name space. So, you know, we could, you could be node 14 and I could be node 20, and we could be sort of nearby each other in this namespace, but we could be on completely opposite sides of the world. So the, and it's essentially based on generating an ID every time you walk on to the network as a node so you're essentially given a random ID in the network which is how we can disperse then the names and IDs as much as possible around the world. So has the sending of of safe coins been simulated within the made safe testing, or is this is this even more experimental than that. So the safe coin implementation is based off of a kind of a lower level implementation of messaging. So, and this this I should also say that there are two kinds of data on the safe network there is data that you're uploading so you upload a file it gets chopped up into chunks and encrypted and that data is spread out throughout the network. It's that's called immutable data you're not able to change the data. And if you were to say want to upload a new version of that data, that piece that file, then you would essentially be uploading a new, a whole new file because it's based off of hashes and as we know in Bitcoin lands, a little bit of change in a piece of data creates a completely different hash. So it's that's called immutable data and then there's structured data, which is mutable data that people who have authorization to mutate the data or change the data can update it with whatever they need. So this is how you essentially creates tokens or any sort of asset that you would want to be able to exchange between peers on the network or users on the network and that is not chopped up into chunks because it's it's a small enough piece of data that you don't need to chop it up. You just encrypt it and store it a couple of times redundantly so it doesn't get lost. And in that way, you can have special special characteristics so that you can change these parts of data. So therefore, if we're talking about safe coin, it's just a piece of data that has the signature, the cryptographic signature of the previous owner and the current owner. And as soon as the current owner says, I'm sending a message to change to tell the the notes that are in charge of this of kind of making sure that this this save coin is secure and not changed by anyone else but me. Once I send my signature to them saying I want to send the student a person. The notes that are in charge of that piece of data, such as the safe point will change the signature so that the previous signature gets wiped, and then the person that just sent it is the new previous signature and then. So it's essentially it's essentially kind of like digital cash where we're kind of it's it's easy to kind of relate to that because there is no kind of trail of trail of payments unless perhaps if you opt into a third party thing that would track the IDs of a coin but that's completely optional. Let me ask how how many safe coins will there be. Oh, there's like, okay, it's like 431 billion something around there. And is that like the same number as the current number of made save coins. No made save coins there's only 10% outs in existence because there's the half part of the network is to use these coins to incentivize people to host the data so if you're if you're a network node then the network will essentially create these bits of data and you enter into a sort of lottery. And, well, you don't enter the network just essentially awards you safe coin in proportion to how much people are successfully able to get from your, your note. And this 431 million or or whatever it is is that is that a hard cap forever can I always feel confident that that my shares in safe coin will not be diluted and and if so, without a blockchain. Is it is that somehow still provable with the code. So, yes, you, you have as much faith in the number of safe coins, not increasing as you have the same faith as the number of bitcoins not increasing if the, you know, the core team decides to go rogue and change the numbers like, obviously there's going to be like, no, but I mean, well, it could technically happen on for both Bitcoin or made safe or any other cryptocurrency right but then people would revolt and fork and, you know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't stand so it's got the same probability as Bitcoin increasing in amounts. And then to answer your second point. There's, it's, it's a little trickier to, to guarantee the existence of a coin or who owns the coin if you're also implementing like a network that is geared towards privacy. One of the main goals of the safe network is to implement completely private network that can't be trackable. And that's essentially like privacy is the opposite of accountability right they're both good in certain for certain use cases, but you know, blockchains are essentially not private at all. And therefore it's a lot easier to essentially check who has what coin and to make sure that everything's okay. So in order for the safe network to kind of guarantee that perhaps a coin isn't double spent. It uses a completely different set of logic which is based off of the DHT, which uses essentially the nodes that are nearby a piece of data so say we'll use safe coin again as an example. Each safe coin will have an ID, just as every node has an ID just as every file chunk has an ID on the network. And that ID essentially dictates which, which nodes are responsible for keeping track of it so instead of a global blockchain network keeping track of everything. The nodes in the made safe or I should say the safe network made safe is the company the safe networks in the network. The nodes have specialized essentially personas or roles to keep track of the data that they're responsible for and which is based off of their distance in this DHT, which sounds like what if you know you want to you're a bad actor and you want to double spend or perhaps if someone's trying if, if say you want to kind of have a good chance of getting all being the owner of all of the nodes surrounding a particular safe coin, which is essentially a civil attack being able to flood the network with nodes so that you can at least take control of part of the network. This this worry is never you can't really ever remove it completely from a decentralized network just as Bitcoin has its own problems with people being able to flood the network and it's not really the same mapping it's not really called the civil attack with if you're you know doing a 51% attack on a blockchain but it's kind of a similar idea where the best you do the best you can you can't ever 100% guarantee that someone won't be able to attack a network, but you put in as much difficulty as possible. So, and, and also like reduce incentives so it's perhaps you, you flood the network with all of these nodes, and then you only like are able to change a small like you're only able to affect like one safe coin that probably isn't worth it. So it's about balancing the difficulty of doing it and disincentivizing against it. And there's a few things that go into the security to prevent being able to surround a node or surround a piece of data with these with your nodes but it comes down to the fact that nodes are given random IDs when they join the network. They don't get to choose where they are in the network and and for most interactions that would kind of that would say you're you know sending a safe coin or whatnot. Most these interactions require two groups of consensus. So you're not only getting one group of nodes come to consensus and say okay, this can happen. Now we need to send this and get permission from another group of nodes that also needs to come to consensus so that essentially makes it even harder to do so say you have say a group is 32 nodes. The closest 32 nodes to a piece of data. And the consensus requires say 28 out of 32 nodes because you know maybe for those nodes are bad actors and you don't you don't want to have to like get consensus a bunch of times you just want to be able to disregard a few nodes that maybe they go offline at that exact moment or something. So you get 28 out of 32 nodes which is a really secure proportion that we've been able to measure. And then so that's about 88% that you would need to kind of flood the network to be able to to kind of know that you'll be able to attack something. But when you add on a second group of consensus requirement, you're essentially doubling that. So that is almost like that's over 150% of the network that you would need to floods you need to say okay the note the network is this big I need to have that much and then you know 50% more. So it's just pushing the, you know, the probability of attack to a really, really low standard. So, I mean, would there, because that makes it sound like I wouldn't even say I want I had a safe coin and I wanted to double spend it. Would it be correct to say first I would have to somehow identify which node IDs are are they are in charge of tracking that safe coin. And second, I'd have to spin up two completely different like quorum of nodes, say two quorums of 32. And I would somehow have to hope that when I spun up those nodes that the safe network would randomly give me the exact ones that I needed in order to be able to double spend like the exact safe coin that I wanted to double spend. Exactly. Yep, that's exactly what what I was trying to say. Yep. So, that's kind of that I guess before you go on that's a similar process that we're doing with all data on the network as well. So, say someone else wanted to attack a piece of data that they know is, you know, maybe there's some, you know, state sanctioned criminal and they're trying to censor something. They're trying to censor some piece of data. They would have to do a very similar process in order to say delete a piece of data or anything. And now, let us switch gears to like, like a sort of currency related question of a safe coin, which is to say, say the value of one safe coin went to the equivalent of like three US dollars. And I wanted to pay you like a dollar fifties worth of safe coin. Could I ever send you half a safe coin? In the current implementation, no, but that's definitely kind of that's on the roadmap for future looking at but with the such a high amounts. We're not in a rush like since there's, you know, essentially a problem to have basically. Yeah, essentially half a bill, sorry, half a trillion or yeah, half a trillion coins about that's essentially not going to be a problem for now. Because, you know, Bitcoin's obviously only 21 million and I mean, yeah, exactly. It would be a good problem to have and it's something on the roadmap, but we're not. We're definitely considering other things are more important to deal with right now. Would such a thing just out of my own curiosity would such a thing be like technically feasible though like could you could you like I don't know. I don't. Could you like cut a message in half. I've heard it's possible I don't know the details though, David Irvine is the founder said it's possible and it's just not on the media. There could be a brief explanation that he gives somewhere in the community forum that we have he kind of frequents there a lot. And let's tell people about that community forum where can people learn more. The community forum is forum dot safe network.io. And this is a forum that's not run by made safe it's run by I'm actually I'm technically an admin but everyone else on the moderation and admin team are just community members and I'm kind of just there as a sort of a way to balance things out to have someone from the public team that but not having everyone, you know, not charged with the forum at all so it's completely community run, but we we use it internally for all for most of our messaging to do to the outside world right now. We post weekly developer updates every Tuesday so yesterday we posted one and that was where we announced the API. And yeah so if not to not to flood David with a lot of new forum posts but he's he's very responsive on the forum and if you have a dire question. I would probably respond to it if the if like someone else in the community doesn't get to it first. Hopefully we can get to it first but it's very kind of tight knit community. That's over the past month or two has been growing really fast. Perhaps because of the coin price increase, but I assume more that. Yeah, I think that I think that's probably getting people's attention but I like to think that people are just like, not as interested in that as the actual, you know, decentralized internet part because that's what's really exciting to me. Well, very good well thank you page for your time. And yeah I hope to get an update from you as more software releases come out in the future. Yeah, just let me know. Okay. Bye. Thanks man. Today's episode is brought to you by the Merkel a cryptocurrency and blockchain news hub with regular technical analyses of all of the top coin networks. The Merkel also covers the fintech space covering business maneuvers and partnerships as well as product releases. You can find it yourself for free at themerkel.com. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for watching and I hope you come back tomorrow. Have a good day. First we saw a presentation by Madesafe, a software project to decentralize the internet that's been 10 years in the works.