SAFE Apps x OS bridge (Adoption)

Development
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Hi guys, talking about adoption, I read topics in this forum and I believe that there are three types of users (generically speaking):
A) Those who already use technologies that involve privacy (Tor, Bittorrent, Zcash, Monero, etc.)
B) Those who believe that privacy is something important (they learned this by watching news of Facebook scandals, etc.), but don’t fit in group A
C) Those who just use everything that is in the mainstream, believing that “mainstream = reliable/safe”.

Getting adoption from Group A is easier, but will always represent a very small portion of the population. Also, a focus on this group would make the media say that SAFE Network is a place for illegal operations, which would make large-scale adoption even more difficult.

But getting adoption from groups B and C is a big challenge. Groups B and C will not install the Safe Browser for adventure or curiosity, they will only use something that makes a lot of sense to them, something extremely useful.

I don’t know if it is possible, but it would be very interesting if there was a transparent bridge between the Desktop/Mobile operating systems and the Safe Network. For example, imagine that someone developed a messaging application (like Whatsapp) inside the Safe Network, but a user can leave this app installed directly on their phone like any other app. The user does not even know that the app is in Safe Network, for him it does not matter, he just sees the usefulness of communicating in a safe way.

When cell phones started to have internet, there was no need for apps, after all cell phones already had browsers. However, the concept of apps became very popular, I believe that mainly due to the ease of obtaining access to resources with one click, without having to enter a browser - then click on a site, besides the possibility of using many offline resources.

The ideal situation in my opinion would be the possibility of using very useful resources with direct access, in a transparent way. I would like to understand what is possible and impossible to do on this point.

*PS: sorry my english

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You have good points IMO, thanks for your contribution.

To chip in my 2 cents:
There is also a part of group B which is using Bitcoin, Litecoin, Signal, Telegram, DuckDuckGo, no-Facebookers, etc. which is actually just wider A. A+ includes dozens of millions of people and does not have those negative connotations you are speaking about. Those A+ guys are listening to things like efficiency, speed, and usefulness (not just hardcore privacy).

In my opinion, Bittorent is already for more than 10 years in group A+ rather than A. Mainstream really. Downloading any Linux distro is mostly preferable trough torrents (completely legally).

To sum it up, best to target A+ which is reasonably big in size and easy to speak to. B can be also spoken to since the beginning but definitely more effort should go to A+. B will be able to successfully adopt after when there are plentiful resources and easy to use and useful apps.

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If I am not mistaken you will be able to download from the network for free and without an account.

This makes it easy to for instance provide access to a collection of data in an app for free without the user needing to know what SAFE even is.

This could work for a video streaming service, something like a wiki, a blog app etc.

The good thing about using SAFE as a developer for these things is that you don’t need to worry about storage at all. This advantage could enable free SAFE services to compete with today’s huge services by huge corporations.

If people want to post a comment or upload their own stuff they need to create a SAFE account, so they will need to learn what SAFE is then.

I think this extremely low friction for new users enables app devs on SAFE to target group C right from the start.

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I would like to be sure about these questions, like:

  1. Can I put a link on mywebsite.com so that people can click and automatically download a PDF from the SAFE Network without having a SAFE account?
  2. If I create a message App that lives inside SAFE Network, can people install it on their mobile phones and access directly like any other Android/IOS App?
  3. Can people download this app mentioned above from Google Play/Apple Store?
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I’m no expert on this, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but this is how I understand it:

If you have a client running in your website that downloads it from the network to the users computer, then yes, it wouldn’t work automatically however as regular web browsers doesn’t know how to use the SAFE network.

In the case of a message app it would not be the same as any other app. The difference would be that the user would need to create a SAFE account and use your app together with the authenticator. The reason for this is that they are putting something on the network, which requires an account.

If you put it there, I don’t see why not. :slight_smile:

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Nice, thank you for your answers. if there’s any expert seeing this conversation, please clarify us. Anyway, on these points:

Will the user have any way to inspect the link to know if it is safe? I mean, a proof that the link refers directly to SAFE Network.

Would the user be able to create his SAFE Network account directly from the app? Or is the only way to create a SAFE Network account via the SAFE browser?
Also, every time the user clicked on the app he would have to manually login to SAFE Network or could there be a way to stay connected?

The apps usually go through an evaluation of the stores and need to be approved. Maybe Google/Apple evaluation process can bar this apps for fear that the app’s technology and its connection to SAFE Network may cause vulnerabilities to the devices. Or wouldn’t that be a potential problem?

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The user would have to trust that the program that’s running on the website to download from the SAFE network is doing what it should. Since this is the case, I don’t think there is any real way to verify it’s a SAFE link other than to check it yourself with a program on your computer that you know what it does.

But at that point you might as well just download it yourself.

It could be possible to have a link on a website that asks to launch the SAFE Browser and navigate to the address containing the PDF. That would be a verifiable way to know what’s going on, but then the user would need to have the SAFE Browser installed.

I think it’d be technically possible to enable the user to create an account directly in the app, but I believe this would be against the philosophy of SAFE. The reason is that the user wants to be sure that only they have access to their data, and if the account is being created in a third party app, the credentials for the account could be sent by the app to the developers of the app, allowing them to snoop on the users.

The recommended way of creating an account will likely be in the SAFE Authenticator.

Hopefully there can be some built in support in the API for having a button in an app that provides some easy and smooth way for developers to help their users create an account and start using their app. It could for instance check if the Authenticator is installed, if it isn’t, helps the user install it, and if it is, asks the user to log in or create an account in it.

I think it’ll be something like this: The user logs in with the Authenticator, then apps can request things from the Authenticator. So the user would log in once in the Authenticator, and then grant “capabilities” to the app that can be saved, so they will not need to log in every time the app is opened. They will stay logged in on the network as long as they are logged in in the Authenticator.

Maybe. I don’t know what their policies are like.

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Thank you, that is good news for me. Since this Authenticator is so important, I wonder if this is being addressed on the SAFE Development roadmap. Do you know something about it?

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I don’t know how up to date the roadmap is, but I often see updates regarding the UX of the Authenticator in the weekly updates.

The most recent weekly update has some pictures if you scroll down. Apparently the app is not called “Authenticator” anymore, but “SAFE Network”.

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That update also has links to Feature Tracker and Screens & Flows by the Safe Network App UX heading (they are slow to load). Those give you more insight into how things work and how far along the work is. Though this only refers to the UX design, and not actual implementation.

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