As a “user”, you can use any browser to access experiences built on top of your Digital Twin. For example, a storage experience that stores data on your Twin or a browser experience that allows you to surf the web from your Twin’s node. When you connect to your Twin, our ThreeFold Connect makes sure that the connection is secure. The Twin runs on a node on the ThreeFold Grid, which you are securely connected to. This takes care of a very safe approach and unlimited scalability. We will dive deeper into the Twin’s security and scalability aspects in a future blog!

Digital Twin in a nutshell

Hopefully, by now you will have a better understanding of the Digital Twin concept. Here is a short recap of everything mentioned so far about it:

• You have full control over your own digital life.
• Experiences can be created using standard web & native technologies.
• The Digital Twin delivers the web interface to your (secure) browser.
• No need for information to travel to central data centers, all communication is fast and private between Digital Twins: No more client-server.
• All logic of your digital life is 100% private to you running in your Twin.
• This is super efficient and sustainable, +10x power savings.
• No blockchain required for your digital life = more privacy, performance, green
  • Exception: blockchain is needed for digital currencies and as a phone book for Digital Twin’s identity.

If you would like to see what the current iteration of the Digital Twin looks like, try it out yourself with FreeFlow Twin in its current beta version! Connect with ThreeFold on Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, and Reddit to join our community and stay updated about evolutions of the ThreeFold project and Digital Twin.

You also learn new skills and get to know some innovative technology that enables you to build and test pretty cool applications and solutions – like deploying a Subsquid instance on the ThreeFold Playground or checking out the different decentralized alternatives to solutions we use every day like WhatsApp, YouTube, Chrome or Zoom with FreeFlow Twin. Our open, friendly and skilled community can offer you support and advice as you start testing and building. Let’s help each other and build cool stuff together!

The ThreeFold Community – Where ideas come to life

Curious about what fellow community members are building on ThreeFold? Here are a few recent examples:

• Teisie has been working on a few great tools to make things easier for his fellow ThreeFolders like an iOS app for node monitoring and a geo explorer. Moreover, he’s been working on an uptime tool and deployment calculator – hosted on the Grid and using Drew’s gateway node for public access. Learn more here. Well done, Teisie!
• Another skilled community member building on the Grid is Drew. With his community project for a Cockpit management interface, he provides a web-based interface for managing a VM that allows users to do a lot of maintenance tasks without ssh – even including full remote desktop capabilities from the browser. Pretty cool, right?

So what are you waiting for? Start exploring and using the many solutions on the ThreeFold Grid today – whether by deploying a weblet, testing the FreeFlow Twin or simply joining our testing group!

How to get started?

There are many ways to get started with ThreeFold. If you’re new to ThreeFold in general, I recommend starting with “Building a New Internet From the Ground Up” – an approachable blog series on the inner workings of the Grid.

A great way to learn more is also by checking out the ThreeFold Litepaper and by exploring the knowledge base. The ThreeFold Grid manual has everything you need to dive right into ThreeFold’s open-source infrastructure and technology.

Key resources to get started:

• Find out what you can do on Threefold Grid
• Dive into the manual to get started
• Learn more about testing the Grid
• Join our testing community
• Watch helpful tutorials from the community in the ThreeFold Video Gallery
• Learn how to contribute to ThreeFold wikis and websites

This post is the third one in a series about building on ThreeFold’s open infrastructure. While part one, gives you a comprehensive overview of the Grid, its evolution and capabilities, the second part is focused on the low-level building blocks and particularly interesting for the more tech-savvy crowd.

Welcome to the third and final part of our series on ThreeFold’s game-changing Internet infrastructure and the solutions available today. This time, we’ll show you what’s possible on the ThreeFold Playground today and how you can become one of the first testers of digitally sovereign end-user experiences.

This is an incredible opportunity to become early adopters of our unique solutions, to get a taste of what it means to become digitally sovereign, and to help shape the future of the Internet. Together we build a decentralized digital world!

Explore a playground full of simple yet powerful deployment experiences

The ThreeFold Playground makes it quite easy to build on top of the ThreeFold Grid by deploying weblets. A weblet is a compiled JavaScript component which can be embedded in any site. With ThreeFold, it basically establishes a private environment running inside your browser, and allows you to share it – while you maintain full control of all activities happening there by using your private key, and with full decentralization.

On the TF Playground, a variety of applications are made available and deployable within just a few clicks, all on top of a fully decentralized peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure. From Virtual Machines to Kubernetes to Presearch Nodes, CapRover, ownCloud, and more – the playground allows you to build in a truly decentralized environment. Essentially, the Playground is an ever-expanding ecosystem of easily-deployable weblets that are built for a decentralized future. It’s the fastest way to build, test, and deploy and enables pretty much anyone to build and experiment with deployment on the Grid. So, this is huge!

Visit the TF Playground to explore the possibilities and read this post to find out what the new version 3.7.0 of the Playground – now live on testnet – has to offer. Dive right in and get started on the TF Grid today!

Here are a few examples of the weblets available on the Playground:

Presearch

Presearch is a longstanding partner of ThreeFold and one of the most popular solutions offered on the Grid. As of the Grid v3.6 release, any 3Node can now host a Presearch node – so if you’re a ThreeFold farmer, it’s now become quite easy for you to host Presearch on your own node. Simply follow this deployment guide to get decentralized search on top of a truly decentralized infrastructure!

CapRover

Leverage the entire CapRover app catalogue even faster and easier and deploy CapRover apps on the ThreeFold Grid. You’ll benefit from full decentralization, energy efficiency and affordability. CapRover is a powerful platform for app deployment and thanks to our CapRover weblet, you’re able to deploy anything you want on top of the ThreeFold Grid!

NEW: Subsquid (testnet)

The latest addition to the ThreeFold Playground is Subsquid, Web3’s premier API framework which is supercharging decentralized apps across more than 30 chains. Basically, you can think of Subsquid as an ETL (extract, transform, load) tool, with a GraphQL server included. With Grid v3.7.0 live on testnet, you can now pre-process and decode raw chain data and store it for easier access by the query nodes by deploying your own Subsquid instance on the Grid’s testnet within just a few clicks here.

So with the ThreeFold Playground, ThreeFold is building a vast ecosystem of advanced deployment experiences and opening up a world of possibilities – allowing anyone to build, test and deploy easily and within a few clicks.

And the best thing about the playground? It’s already been available for a while and continuously being improved and extended!

How to achieve digital sovereignty with a set of end-user experiences

“Through simple, secure, and scalable technology, ThreeFold empowers millions to invent and explore new experiences.“ – Kristof de Spiegeleer

We’ve entered the third phase of our journey towards our ultimate vision of a better future – the phase of Web 4. In addition to fully comprehensive decentralized edge cloud solutions, the ThreeFold ecosystem is also developing a range of applications and experiences across IoT, metaverse, blockchain, DeFi, banking, education and beyond.

Throughout this phase – which has only just begun – a multitude of valuable and meaningful experiences are being built by the ThreeFold ecosystem and partners to empower people with equal chances to learn, create, and thrive in a decentralized digital economy – what we like to call an abundance-based future for humanity.

The first roll-out of the third phase will empower people to become fully self-sovereign thanks to ThreeFold’s Digital Twin technology and a variety of decentralized alternatives to popular applications and tools. 

FreeFlow Twin

The Digital Twin technology provides each user with a unique digital identity that can serve as the key to an open, self-sovereign and complete digital future. This solution was designed with a very simple objective in mind: everyone should be the center of their entire digital life. It represents your digital self and hosts your entire digital life in a secure and private way – empowering you to own your data and offering you decentralized applications that enable you to maintain your sovereignty. For end users, owning their own deployments opens the possibility for a full range of experiences that have the same quality as crypto – self custody.

With Grid V3.7.0, ThreeFold’s all-in-one decentralized productivity tool that includes instant messaging, video call, social, and data storage features – formerly known as Uhuru – is being rebranded to FreeFlow Twin. It brings sovereign and secure alternatives to many of the centralized solutions we use every day like Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Chrome, Zoom and many more.

FreeFlow Twin will be part of an ecosystem of decentralized alternatives called FreeFlow Life. Find more information on the experiences, how to start testing now and where to share your feedback here!

This paradigm shift is a pretty big deal, isn’t it?

DeFi Solutions

We’ve also decided to develop our own DeFi solutions to support the growth and expansion of the Internet of Internets and an abundance-based future where we are truly sovereign: community-based liquidity pools and the P2P DeFi Wallet – both expected early next year. Learn more about the upcoming solutions here!

The Grid is open – an invitation to build, deploy and test

ThreeFold’s open Internet infrastructure is fully peer-to-peer, decentralized and super reliable. It already offers a multitude of solutions for developers, end-users and everyone in-between. And the Grid and the solutions offered are ready for the community to build, deploy and test, as we continue to collectively build, advance and expand.

And while we’ve collectively already built a lot and achieved crucial milestones towards realizing our ultimate goals, we’re also just the beginning of the third phase of our exciting journey with many ambitions and goals still ahead.

While we’re still in a spot where we can be considered a hidden gem and being way undervalued, remember this: ThreeFold is inevitable. We are visionaries, building the plane in the air. We are confident in growing the project in a real and authentic way. We have a strong plan and vision. Our technology is needed. The underlying foundation is functional and ready. Now, it’s up to the believers to build, test and deploy the solutions we need for a better world. And together, we build. Together, we can achieve the extraordinary and provide better alternatives for people, enterprises and governments.

We not only invite you to come see what’s possible. We invite you to get involved. What are you waiting for?

Start exploring and using the many solutions on the ThreeFold Grid today – whether by deploying a weblet, testing the FreeFlow Twin or simply joining our testing group!

• Build on ThreeFold’s Open Infrastructure – Part One: Intro
• Build on ThreeFold’s Open Infrastructure – Part Two: For Experts

Not sure where to start? Dive into the manual and learn more about testing the ThreeFold Grid.

After looking back at the ThreeFold Grid’s evolution and what makes it a game-changing Internet infrastructure in part one, it’s time to explore our cloud solution and the technology available today in part two! You can think of these as some of the essential low-level building blocks that when combined created a limitless sandbox for developers.

If you’re wondering what virtual machines are, haven’t heard about Kubernetes before and don’t know your way around coding languages, this part might be less interesting for you. Feel free to skip and jump right into part three on weblets and end-user experiences.

Elements of our comprehensive & decentralized cloud solution

The ThreeFold Grid provides various primitives for compute, storage, and network – fulfilling all the needs centralized cloud providers cater to as well, while offering advantages in terms of decentralization, energy efficiency, security and more. Zero-OS includes a collection of components, called primitives. These primitives are the low-level constructs which can be deployed on the ThreeFold Grid. As mentioned above, they act as building blocks for skilled developers that enable them to build and create in complete digital freedom.

Additionally, the high compatibility of ThreeFold’s primitives with industry-standard tools and protocols makes it easy and seamless for developers to migrate workloads to the Grid. All of the primitives not only benefit from the unique efficiency and security features of Zero-OS, but also come with unique features and capabilities themselves. Here are some of the primitives to give you an idea of what you’ll get:

ZMachine

ThreeFold’s ZMachine is a lightweight virtual machine (VM) solution that’s unique to the ThreeFold Grid. ZMachine enables both traditional VM deployments and also introduces a next generation container specification built on our ZFlist technology. ZFlist containers enabled by ZMachines are more secure and more flexible than the current industry standard Docker-based containers. With Kubernetes running on top of ThreeFold’s ZMachine technology, we have a highly compatible and unique solution.

ZFlist

The ZFlist is a next generation container format – supported directly at the operating system level on Zero-OS – which extends the industry-standard Docker container concept in an efficient and secure way. It provides a unique advantage over traditional containers via the use of mini VMs. By employing mini VMs, the FList concept provides better isolation than traditional container systems while retaining the advantages that containers offer over full VMs.

Kubernetes

ThreeFold has long supported the most used open-source container orchestration tool in the world, Kubernetes, which integrates the industry standard Docker format, a container creation and management tool. It’s used to manage many of the largest and most complex cloud deployments. Kubernetes can be used to create a production-ready environment. The ThreeFold Grid provides a lightweight Kubernetes VM that can be used to create clusters according to specific needs. By providing both VMs and Kubernetes, we’re able to offer the most comprehensive solution in the decentralized/blockchain space to deploy, scale, and manage cloud compute workloads. Kubernetes users can, for the most part, simply bring their existing configuration files and recreate their deployments on a Grid based cluster seamlessly. With the third generation of the Grid, we provided a very simple way to provision Kubernetes clusters with Terraform.

Terraform

Terraform is a widely-used open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) software tool enabling a consistent workflow in order to manage complex deployments across different cloud providers. It also integrates directly with our Grid’s existing Kubernetes functionality to offer a complete solution for reserving hardware and deploying software.

In a nutshell, Terraform offers a complete solution for reserving hardware and deploying software. It allows for specifying deployments on the ThreeFold Grid in a simple, declarative, and human-readable language describing the desired end state. Terraform can be used to deploy the full set of Zero-OS primitives, supporting any existing or future Linux workload, with endless possibilities. It is like a lower-level Kubernetes for the hardware part of cloud deployments.

Dedicated Nodes

We’re also supporting dedicated nodes. By utilizing dedicated nodes on the ThreeFold Grid, you’ll benefit from a truly decentralized and highly reliable Internet infrastructure that uses less energy and comes at a much more affordable price than any comparable alternative. With dedicated nodes, users are able to exclusively reserve the entire capacity of a 3Node to deploy solutions for themselves or for other customers, while also paying for all capacity of the respective 3Node. Dedicated nodes on our Grid will be highly cost effective, as they’ll be available with a 70% discount on pricing. All the ThreeFold Grid features will be available on dedicated nodes as well – from deploying VMs and containers to CapRover and more. Dedicated and non-dedicated 3Nodes can be combined.

V Language

ThreeFold is built with simplicity in mind which is why we’re using V – a statically typed programming language similar to Go, and inspired by Rust, Swift, and Oberon. It’s the official smart contract language on the Grid, as its simplicity and readability allows anyone to go through and understand any code base, even non-developers.

Despite being simple, V gives a lot of power to the developer and can be used in pretty much every field, including systems programming, webdev, gamedev, GUI, mobile, science, embedded, tooling, etc. It aims to become an alternative to JavaScript as the de facto coding language on the market in the upcoming years. With V, the developer doesn’t need to change anything in their code. “It just works”, like in Python, Go, or Java, except there’s no heavy GC tracing everything or expensive RC for each object. V can translate your entire C project and offer you the safety, simplicity, and 10-25x faster compilation speeds.

With +30,5K Stars on GitHub, V brings a strong open-source developer community to the ThreeFold ecosystem to develop the infrastructures and applications of tomorrow – making it the ideal smart contract language for the ThreeFold ecosystem.

An open invitation

So, now that you’ve learned more about the building blocks of the ThreeFold Grid and how you can build with them, we’d like to invite you to try and test them yourselves!

While we’re very proud of our progress and the strong ecosystem around us, now’s the time to build upon the foundation. The team continues to do incredible work to further develop and advance the Grid with each and every release. They continue to improve the components, develop new features and build new solutions.

With your support, the team can work even faster. If you share our belief in open source and decentralization, we invite you to help us test and improve not only the Grid and its primitives but also the solutions built on top. Together, we keep building and advancing to realize our Internet of Internets vision and to empower people with true digital sovereignty. 

• Dive into the manual to get started
• Learn more about testing the ThreeFold Grid
• Join this growing movement & our testing community

Join us for part three!

Get ready for part three of our series where we’re diving into a world of possibilities for developers, end-users and everyone in-between. The final part will not only show you what’s possible on the ThreeFold Playground today but also introduce you to our end-user experiences that empower you with digital sovereignty which are available for beta testing now!

We’ve reached a pivotal moment in the evolution of the Internet. And ThreeFold is ready to unlock a new Internet era – one filled with abundance and opportunity for all, one which is better for our planet. Our open-source technology, future-facing ecosystem and collaborative community have the potential to drive this new era forward.

For us, the Internet was always meant to be peer-to-peer, where anyone could own hardware, and connect and exchange directly with full security and in full privacy – without any entity in the middle. This is how the Internet began. But as demand grew, big tech began to monopolize its infrastructure and all the major platforms.

Since its inception, ThreeFold has been committed not only to delivering on the original promise of the Internet, but also to realizing our ultimate vision of a better future for all. For the past six years, we’ve been building up an incredible full-stack, open-source, decentralized Internet, all from the ground-up. We’ve come a long way and the result is, well, exceptional. There is nothing else out there like ThreeFold.

From creating our own blockchain-driven and highly secure operating system (which allows computers to become decentralized servers), to building an ultra-scalable Quantum Safe Storage System, a complete far edge cloud computing platform and a planetary peer-to-peer network all accessible via a unique Smart Contract for IT on the ThreeFold Blockchain, we’re proud to have the most complete edge infrastructure to power the next-generation Internet era.

And we’re taking concrete steps to further expand this infrastructure that offers a truly decentralized layer 0 for any blockchain or Internet application. Moreover, with the help of our community of Grid testers, we’re continuously advancing the underlying technology and working towards making it usable for as many people and use cases as possible.

Our vision and technology have matured into the Internet of Internets – a network of thousands of community-built and -owned Internets through which we strive to interconnect all of humanity. A new world is coming, and our technology has the potential to revolutionize digitization on a global scale, across sectors. And yet we remain a hidden gem.

So, what solutions does the ThreeFold Grid offer today already? And why exactly should you start to build on top of ThreeFold? Let’s explore some of the many possibilities available today.

The ThreeFold Grid – A cutting-edge, highly scalable peer-to-peer infrastructure

“ThreeFold is growing the ThreeFold Grid by enabling a community of thousands of farmers from around the world to participate and own a piece of the Internet.” – Adnan Fatayerji

The Grid is a peer-to-peer cloud computing network that’s highly compatible with current industry standards. In late December 2021, ThreeFold launched the third generation of the ThreeFold Grid on mainnet with a fully functional tech stack – a huge and crucial step towards a fully production-ready and decentralized infrastructure. The third generation not only brought a massive leap forward in the decentralization of the Grid but also made for a much simpler user experience for farmers and Grid users. People from all over the world are connecting thousands of 3Nodes to create the world’s largest decentralized Internet infrastructure, and new capacity is being connected every day. Find the latest Grid stats and utilization numbers in this regularly updated thread.

Over the past months, the team evolved the Grid through version 3.6.1 and upgraded it to mainnet in July after receiving 100% community approval. This release introduces more stability to the TF Grid and includes various upgrades and new features like the ThreeFold Connect App, the new unified dashboard for a simpler user experience, and more. Big progress was also made in terms of the DAO functionality that went live on TF Chain, with the first TF Chain (L1) DAO proposal was voted on and approved in August.

And with each new Grid release, we’re getting one step closer to solidifying the foundation of the Internet of Internets. Currently, the team is working towards completing Grid version 3.7.0 which includes some significant updates, improvements and new features like FreeFlow Twin, a new Node Pilot, new deployment features and a lot more. The team continues to do incredible work to further develop and advance the Grid as well as to support utilization and adoption by offering tools and applications that are user-friendly, secure, efficient and scalable. A massive thank you to our incredible tech team and the community of Grid testers!

Next up: our cloud solution

So, the ThreeFold Grid has been evolved, advanced and expanded quite a bit, hasn’t it? About time to take a closer look at our cloud solution and everything enabled by the technology and tooling built on top. As a heads up, part two of our series on ThreeFold’s game-changing Internet infrastructure is for the more tech-savvy crowd. If you don’t consider yourself “a tech person” you might prefer to jump to part three on weblets and end-user experiences right away.

Helpful Resources:

• Dive into the manual to get started
• Find out more about our technology
• Learn more about testing the ThreeFold Grid
• Join this growing movement & our testing community

As of edition 24, we’ll only share the Weekly via email and TF News, so make sure to subscribe via the respective buttons on the top-right corner of our website.

Community Updates:

• YouTube influencer Tactical Investing featured ThreeFold in a new video and shared the potential of ThreeFold farming with his community of 82.3K subscribers. Watch it here!

• You’re going on vacation but don’t know how to check on your 3Nodes? Read the community-sourced tips and tricks on how to secure and maintain your TF farm while you’re away.

• Did you already check out the new ThreeFold Video Gallery? It’s a collection of all video material available on ThreeFold – from deep dive sessions to DIY tutorials and more!

Technology Developments:

• TF Chain was updated to the latest version of Substrate on devnet. This will facilitate further development and allows us to get code reviews from the Parity team.

• We now have a new peer list available for the Planetary Network which you can use to access the end-to-end encrypted peer-to-peer global overlay network.

• Start testing ThreeFold Grid V3.6.0 live on testnet. Check out the full release with actionable tips for testing here!

ThreeFold Grid:

• Take a look at this actionable guide for deploying workloads on the ThreeFold Grid, shared by all-star farmer Mik, and get started today!

• Migrate your 3Nodes to V3 asap by following the simple steps of the migration process.

• Global Titan shipping continues, so don’t forget to provide all information for your Titan order to ensure quick delivery.

See you next week, ThreeFolders! 🙌

If you’re a community member interested in sharing your story or being featured in ThreeFold content, please reach out!

You can find the previous editions on our blog. For older editions of ThreeFold Weekly (Vol 1-11), go to our forum.