I agree that the old ways don’t make sense…
…but I still boot duct taped tie-rapped virtual linux machines off an emulated floppy drive within an emulated cd-rom and this emulated computer gets its storage from an emulated scsi device which underlying emulated block storage still thinks in heads cylinders and sectors. And docker and kubernetes are just as dumb if you look at what they actually are.
How will we get rid of all that legacy thinking ?
My gears are turning. How would a web site that someone publishes be known? If a file, database, web site, is intended to be shared (viewable, or maybe also editable), with everyone on the network, or with a group on the network, how would anyone know about it or find it? Imagining then the following apps/capabilities:
Look to the web before search engines.
Me too, it’s all a bit foggy right now in my mind.
We need to consider, what if web sites did not exist, but are only fleeting moments in time, information that is transient and valid only in a temporal sense for short periods?
What if what we know as web sites were all apps? So your amazon app, YouTube app etc. and then we see today that is almost what is happening.
So deeper down the rabbithole and we see already sites & corporations banning each other form scraping data or using API’s for certain use cases and so on. So there is already a change. Kids nowadays don’t use the web in terms of sites, but in terms of apps. So that is another change.
Google etc. are becoming AI answer engines and that is another change,do we want directed to static(ish) content or just the answer? If we want to buy stuff then that is also automating and that automation means less browsing and reading and more just instructing what we want and so on.
What I mean is the terra is not as firma as we can all believe today and there are changes afoot already. It might be easier to get in front and be there first instead of copy what was there previously and hanging on today.
I know this is all a bit futuristic, but I do believe there is a really big chance things are about to change here and hopefully for the better. If we see this path and can then help the many to be involved and reduce the power of the few then I feel we are on the right path. What exactly that looks like though, I don’t quite know, but I know it’s not a search index controlling our access and advertising the bejesus out of us 
At least I hope so and I hope we can be part of the solution here.
You are a visionary David, something I will never be.
I’m pragmatic, and see what’s happening clearly when others don’t.
The problem I most often see in others though, is wishful thinking.
I could buy into your optimistic future if the network had not been shackled to Blockchain capitalism and driven in exactly the direction we have been - many of us at least - looking to move away from.
I know there were risks in sticking with the native token, but really that was always the case, and it was what many of us signed up for. And stuck with for ten years.
Instead we have a storage network that will be dominated by Blockchain capitalist partners, crypto mindset developers and crypto savvy users.
We will not see many ordinary folk in any of those roles now, for lots of reasons, all rooted in the decision to prioritise exchanges and an exit for who knows what reasons. Maybe there really was no choice, but reducing risk is not a good enough one for me.
There could be no centralized controller, so I am still trying to wrap my brain around how the insidious nature of advertising as it exists today could emerge. I would hope it couldn’t, given the nature of the architecture. But yes, I’m only a few days in, and still rewiring the neural network in my brain to accommodate a greater vision of what may be possible.
Although it may have sounded like status quo, I am thinking in terms of what people want/need and have always wanted/needed, whether they do it through apps, web pages, or other means. We used to go to the library to seek information, now we go to the web or an app, or ask our favorite AI for a run down. We want to communicate with each other. We want to trade (or buy/sell), not necessary thinking about rampant consumerism, more as a natural thing that we have always needed to be able to do within a society. I’d love to connect with a network that wasn’t always invading my privacy, hijacking my attention as a resource, and trying to turn me into a consuming machine to generate $ for someone else.
I get what you are saying Mark and I can agree with much/most of it. However 10 years ago Poloniex were all for connecting us up and integrating. Since then the whole bubble has happened and honestly the whole place has become a mess. The exchanges are all tied up in regulations and cannot integrate or they are (more often) just chasing the quick buck and integrate what’s easy (so another erc20 name).
That is unfortunate and precludes any new currency right now, but acting alongside this and building a truly decentralised data network that, uses a currency of some sort to transfer resources, Is as good as we can get right now. With a build up of users and use cases then I feel the ground will change for us and we will then have others helping out and integrating or building new exchange mechanisms etc.
In terms of initial users, then there will be a lot of crypto folk and that’s OK in my mind, but as devs we can develop apps in ways that almost hide the currency, native or erc20 and make the experience of sharing resources valuable. So the person in a very poor place running an app is also earning and able to use the app and write data. That’s a start and in my opinion we hide the fact they use the network and the currency to start with. As things role out then those with extra resources (disk/bw etc.) can start to just sell that in any way they can get cash for it and on we go.
So I don’t see us inextricably tied here, the currency part is a mechanism to transfer resources at it’s most fundamental, what currency is not so important. As we progress and want nano payments at massive scale then we need, no only want, a much faster more concurrent currency and blockchain is unlikely to provide that, even at L2 solutions, but who knows? In any case I think we need to separate the currency from the features of decentralised data as much as we can.
In the future the data itself may in fact be the currency of humanity, i.e. knowledge, we just don’t know, but we need to get a foothold in the game.
I hope you can also see my side of this one. I am much more focussed on what we provide in terms of data and resources than how we do in terms of what currency.
This has not been explained, nor the need for exchanges in January or shortly after. We already have on-ramps (ones which are also a great incentive to the people we most want to attract to run nodes): running nodes. We also have off-ramps: buying storage and subsequently other services.
The need for exchanges was not there in the original concept (spacecoin), though perhaps became implicit with the token sale? IDK, were they promised? Possibly.
Let’s see a plan for this. It hasn’t happened with blockchain so why is that? Why and how is this going to be different from here on?
If that is a priority I would have expected the case to be made based on this and something credible. Same with getting to a network that allows payment for storage with the native token.
As with most of this year what comes from Autonomi often isn’t credible and has proven unreliable. So by all means let’s dig into areas like this, but also let’s see a credible plan around getting away from ERC20 at some point to a network that uses a native token. And if that isn’t going to be a mission that deserves a credible strategy and plan, I’d like to see that stated honestly.
More of the same feels insulting. Warm words and wishful thinking around how things might go, now have the opposite effect on me and is why I gave up on these kind of discussions. It’s only now you are back that I’m bothering at all, but I have pretty much lost the stomach for this.
Instead I’m focusing on the very low expectations this project now has for me: pay-once storage for a very different demographic and negligible chance of the original vision being realised (encapsulated in the fundamentals and this being “for everyone”). It happens I can do a backup app and keep the web stuff going at the same time as much of the code is in common, but I don’t really see many regular people using regular type apps (or new style ‘regular’ services).
I can only see what you tell us, and much of why and how has not been related at all. There’s no point in speculating, so in terms of what you say: yes I understand but I do not think your vision is credible from where we now are.
EDIT: P.S. I’m going to leave this now. Being reminded of what I believe this means always makes me feel bad.
I am confused about something. Do we want to attract large datasets with the pay once secure storage solution in order to generate capital and keep things running, with an eye towards the future when there will simply be automated fuel charge transactions for use? Or is the model ultimately also going to involve up front payments for secure data storage?
For me, the question, “What apps (demand side of network) will really bring people to the network?” needs to be elaborated upon to include the answers to the above questions. Who are we bringing to the network? Just people whose data storage needs, en masse, amount to something, or corporations with large data storage needs, or both? What is the priority?
I may not be asking the right questions, having not assimilated and accommodated everything in my brain yet, but better to put the questions out, I think, than not.
We want use of all kinds, but uploading huge data sets and apps are not really the same thing. Some apps will require huge data and that’s OK. The networks designed to handle all these use cases. I would love to see lots of apps though, I see that personally as the future.
But use of the network in any form as we push out is great and as designed the more the merrier here, both in amounts of data and also amount of apps.
Would i be right in thinking that apps that don’t require producing large amounts of data (such as GBs) at a time are a logical starting point for short term development by community ,anyone?
ai made this list (below)
a couple of questions
Which ones/solutions if any might be relevant and able to benefit from autonomi features in 2025?
Does anything on this list look easy or easier relative to all the others on the list?
It would be exciting to see another community software solution.
…
List
Productivity apps like LibreOffice,#
which process small amounts of text data.
Simple calculator apps or spreadsheets that only need to perform
basic arithmetic or data management tasks.
Note-taking apps or simple note organizers.
Small game development applications that
don’t require storing large asset files.
Lightweight image editors or
basic photo manipulation tools.
Simple drawing or paint programs.
Basic website builders or landing page creators.
Basic task management tools like to-do lists or sticky note organizers.
Simple file sharing platforms that don’t require uploading GBs of data.
Web-based chatbots or virtual assistants with limited functionality.
the end
(but im sure only the beginning)
If you had to pick one which is easiest ?
nah I dont think anything in that list is applicable to what autonomi offers.
I think more in the direction of video streaming apps like tiktok.
Focusing on apps: How will these apps appear to the end user? Will they show up on their app searches just like any other app, such that they are not even aware that what they are seeing is an Autonomi app? If so, will users then be pleasantly surprised that the app does not have advertising and the feeling that the app is secretly trying to make the users into addicts and tracking every interaction and eye-blink? Would users want to pay for that? They already do, of course, with all kinds of subscriptions for ad-free services. So what is or could be different (to the end user)?
the end user doesnt necessarily have to notice anything.
A tiktok competitor could use auotnomi (partly?) as a storage backend and dumb teenagers will still scroll through a never ending offering of dumb videos.
Fair enough, they cant all be irrelevant , i’m thinking more about the average person making or contributing to the making of open source software, small projects that they own (along with data ), so making tictoc would not be a project for a single person or few dozen part time amateurs in a pod who might be better described as hobbyists.
actually… autonomi would enable a 15 year old kid in bangladesh to code a tiktok/youtube competitor without having to invest in datacenter infrastructure.
if you look at the stuff that forum user tracktion made… yoh can already play hi def video straight fro. the network.
I don’t know how Z-library.sk and Sci-Hub fund what they are doing, but they would be good candidates for storage of this kind. Then the obvious app follows.
Where can we see that?