It's only just begun,12 Million Nodes in 12 days, 15 Million Nodes in 13 days.

Privacy for everyone. Self Encrypted  Uploads from your Own System.

The pay once model of Autonomi, download from anywhere, your keys, your data business model is being validated by everyday users everywhere.

MAIDSAFE THE WORLD'S FIRST ICO: HAS FINALLY ARRIVED AS AUTONOMI NETWORK

Having found out about Maidsafe in 2014 as the world's first ICO, then tracking them closer starting in late 2017, Irvine and his small team were really trying to build the 'Impossible Network'.

At the time, I personally thought, "Have at 'er', good on you all if you pull it off, I will be cheering for you"

Eight years later, I found myself 'full in' on the Autonomi Network, running a few nodes from this ancient laptop I am now writing this post on.

Yes there are growing pains. Autonomi after TGE, and their authors Maidsafe are working full blast on improvemtns to tune the performance of node operators and uploaders alike as network communications behaviours never seen before start to show up, across a number of use case and network actions.

AUTONOMI NETWORK: THE UPSTART ADOLESCENT DISTRIBUTED PRIVATE INTERNET LAYER

READY FOR ACTION- RUN SOME NODES FIRST, UPLOAD CLIENTS COMING...

12 Million Nodes is not a small number, going from Zero on Feb 11th to tha number today Feb 13th, in 12 days is really a good sign there is every user and big  node operator interest. Sure some 'NodeRunners' are operating 2000 or 3000 plus nodes, some of them as clusters in the Hyperscaler Clouds, some of them from home on cheap used hardware, repurposed to run nodes. It feels in some ways like 2011 running Bitcoin Miners.

While the network is largely empty with planty of space to uploade file, the developers and Irvine @ Maidsafe pile away at their trade to get the UI driven upload client just right for both mobile and desktop Operating Systems. There are also a handful of 'OGs'  Original Gangsters, now penned 'Pioneers' in Autonomi Lingo on Discord,  which have banded togetther to fund a drip faucet of ANT, funded with ETH, so people can run a script and test the upload behaviour of the network by uploadin a file in parallel with alot of other users to help stress test the network as it grows, for free.

The OG EINGINEERED 'Drip Faucet' to test uploads in volume is an early days, post TGE Community effort that cuts across the ages 20 and over 70 and nice to see.  Each OG has something to bring, some the latest learnings from Uni (one such fringe 'lurker' OG is now leaning the effort), other OGs bring a lifetime of computing experience in nwtwork admin, Devops, software development and test across a wide variety of systems, both proprietary and open. That's what makes Autonomi so interesting, in that the Autonomi Community is really that PGP "PrettyGoodPrivacy CyberPunk spirit in real life, working together, all the way, every day.

100 MILLION NODES WHEN?

Will Maidsafe get to 100 Million nodes to outsize and even dwarf any of the biggest  node operator networks out there, lurking in some giant Enterpriser Like Apple or NVIDIA, making Zettabytes of data storage capacity available for permenant  data and knowledge and a crazy low price?

In a word, Yup.

How quickly Autonomi Network reaches 100 Million nodes  is really on the shouldes ofthe Maidsafe development Team. Judging by the pace on Github, each is busy griding  the quality  needed into the simple to use Node operator software node-launchpad and for the geeky Linux types who want fine graided control at the cli (me included) antctl.

WHEN UPLOADS? Now for cli Geeks, soon for Desktop and Mobile UI folk.

As for the UI upload client codenamed "DAVE', there is work to be done for sure. That said, antctl  (Ant control) at the command line is pretty easy to use, once one reads the manual, and works across not just Linux, but also MACOS and Win10/11 Terminal App accessed  command line interfaces.

WHEN NETWORK EMISSIONS INCENTIVES: ANT ERC-20 TOKENS

Today I am toiling away on Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS waitng for my first 'incentive' emission of ANT, sprayed by a Smart Contract hosted on Arbitrum One to encourage the everyday developer to try it out. 

What has happened though is that everyday (hardly read the manual) user is also showing up and burdening the small team at Maidsafe with lots of questions, most of which are deftly vectored to the excellent documentation at autonmi.com.

The good news is right now, despite how fast the Autonomi Network is growing, emmission incentives are being depoisted in those that are running 100s or 1000s of nodes, albeit sporadically, a the Maidsafe team works to tune that SC  and the antnode software to ensure such emissions are evenly distibuted, giving incentives to even the small mode operators.

Currently user like me running a few (5 nodes in my case) aren't seeing anything in the way of emission rewards.

I say so what, it's early days, the fact this "Impossible Nework" this new distributed privacy layer for the Internet is up and running and it free to run antnodes, easly launched with node-launchpad, is a story iin itself.

As I mentioned before, Maidsafe is working right now on tweaking the Smart Contract sparing emmision incentives (ANT ERC-20 Tokens) and antnode software (the latter being really a little software router that speaks GOSSIP and uses XOR addressing to shuffle encrypted data chunks between peer antnodes together taking care storing copies of the uploaded file, and providing quotes to upload clients based on how full they are)

CROSSING THE CHASM

Maidsafe HAS crossed the chasm between 'Applied Research' and 'Early Commecialization , after years in pure research land, to become an early commercial software company with a WORLDWIDE  DISTRIBUTED INTERNET PRIVACY LAYER solutIon WHICH actually works and people want, because they want their privacy on the Internet, they demand it.

Maidsafe had some experienced veteran Cryptosphere help as well with a new hire into the CEO role @forthebux on X/Twitter (Ex CALA Games COO and CEO of Gala Music),  and a few others with applicable Ethereum Market and Smart Contract experience under their belts, that, and a very tight small OG community that by and large,  stuck together to transform themselves really into early commercial "OGs", helping 'newbs' on the fly, where no question is a dumb question.

For me, 12 Million antnodes operating in 12 days proves  Autonomi Networkand Maidsafe have crossed that chasm.

                                                       An unofficial OG graph (which sort of works)

What's Next for Autonomi Network

100 million antnodes this year? Likely imo as the Maidsafe team gets better and better every week, learning to become a commecial softwar company fast. Just follow Github and gauge the velocity of their effort and quality of the code yourself.

Future Shock a la FutureScot: A Network the World did not see coming: AUTONOMI NETWORK

ZETTABYTES OF PERMANENT INTERNET STORAGE, FOREVER - FOR THE PEOPLE

If thee is one thing I have observed about the Maidsafe team and Irvine which they have along with the early OGs, is the ability to rebound from unforseen problems. Maidasafe was the Pioneer as the first ICO,  suffering through the rocky naviagation and hiccups of such a beast, plus at the same time overcoming other technical challenges and distractions and a big veer off course, would have scuttled most crypto projects (and did their are lots of Zombie shitcoins out there), but not Maidsafe.

The only hurdles facing the Autonomi Network now are those things unknown to a massivley distributed Internet privacy layer network heading toward 100 million antondes in operation and Zettabytes of cheap storage available.

Is Autonomi Network the AWS Killer Autonomi Network, that Maidsafe claims it to be?

For me, yes, I think Maidsafe is right, as AWS can't possibly meet the price point and provide permanent data uploads paid for once and free forever to download anytime from any machine.

Autonomi Network is shaping up  as THE PLACE to STASH: your will; your favourite family videos; and all that knowledge in file, video and image you deem imnportant yourself and the world. Oh and backups of company records, let's not forget that one. Who needs Iron Mountain now?

So do the world a favour, run a few Autonomi Network Antnodes with node-launchpad, if you can, its quite easy, and don't worry so much about the upload clients, David Irvine and the Maidsafe development team has got this, there is no stopping them now.

And the comumnity at Autonomi Nework , living in Discord and on their Forum site will help too, more than one would expect these days. Real people with funny handles. 

You might even see me "Thunderboltkid" help out from time to time on Discord and the forum as well, in between my day job and home chores.

I will be the first to shout out here on Publish0x, when I earn my first incentive emission and win my first right to upload a file for some ANT Tokens. (coming soon)

TK over and out.

P.S- I have been operating antnodes as typical node-launchpad user (I had to park my inner Linux geek , which was really hard) since early June 2024, doing beta testing as typical "Joe anybody" user  running nodes during early access,  running just five nodes both on  MS Windows 11 20242H first, and then later on Linux (Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS) on a 2019 Acer Aspire 8GB RAM, 256GB SATA SSD using an i5 Intel processor, and it was worth every ANT reward I received for doing such  'typical small user' blackbox testing. To say I was there when Autonomi Network was birthed post TGE is Amazing, to say the least!

We've only just begun, so join us on Discord per the autonomi.com website link!

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