2022 was a year marked by significant steps on technology, big strides towards decentralization, a commitment to our values (planet, people, and authenticity), time well-spent on the ground, and strong contributions from the community. Let’s take a look back at all that ThreeFold held space for this year.
The ThreeFold Grid
The grid has grown significantly this year, with a whopping total of 2900+ online nodes as of this week. The farming community is contributing capacity across 62 countries, made up of nearly 72,000 Cores and providing nearly 40PB of storage capacity.
- This year, we officially said goodbye to Grid v2, which was discontinued, along with all platforms no longer needed on v3. Farewell old friend!
- Thanks to our motivated team and testing community, the grid evolved from version 3.0 to 3.7.1, and soon 3.8. Each update included improvements to various ThreeFold Grid components including the Playground, Zero-OS, TF Wallet, TF Chain and more.
Farming
Thanks to all of our farmers for upholding & expanding the Grid! It was beautiful to see the community growth and engagement on both chat and the forum.
- A power saving feature is in development for farmers, allowing idle nodes to power off and still farm tokens. Our developers worked very hard to make it manageable from the chain. While they got it to work recently, the solution was not the most ideal one, therefore, the team is rethinking this feature as a service that a farmer can choose to run for their farm rather than something that happens entirely on TF Chain. Stay updated & contribute to this on GitHub.
- For those who are interested in farming, find your node(s) on the global 3Node marketplace, launched this year. (Or, build your own!)
Technology
When it comes to ThreeFold technology, we saw major progress. Thanks to the team and testing community for your efforts here.
- The ThreeFold Playground became a robust grid solution and gained new additions this year! Find more here.
- Full Virtual Machines, introduced in Q4, allow limitless possibilities and are easier than ever to deploy on the Grid as from Grid 3.7.
- The grid experience became much more simple. For instance, the Dashboard has been improved & features such as the explorer have been integrated within.
- We are very proud to have launched the FreeFlow Twin (formerly Uhuru), a decentralized alternative to digital platforms, tools and browsers, offering a tangible UX. Anyone can try it out here.
- The ThreeFold Connect App gained new features and improvements as well to offer a better UX.
- Mastodon Powered by ThreeFold are servers that are deployed on the ThreeFold Grid via ThreeFold’s Mastodon Deployer. It’s a web application that will enable anyone to deploy and manage their Mastodon within a few clicks (See more below).
Decentralization
Decentralization is at the core of ThreeFold and creates resilience while involving the community in the decision-making process, leading to wider ownership and greater engagement. In 2022, we took great steps towards true decentralization, and will continue to take this path next year!
- Several Grid Enhancement Proposals were made and voted on by the community around the grid and farming.
- This year, we officially introduced the validator program, which will come to fruition in 2023.
- As of ThreeFold Grid v3.6.1, the DAO functionality has been live on TF Chain.
- The first TF Chain (L1) DAO proposal – for the creation of the Gold Certified Farming Policy – was voted on and approved
TFT
While the token price has been low this year, it presents a great opportunity for believers to buy TFT.
- This year, it became possible to buy TFT directly with BTC (Bitcoin) as well as with fiat currencies through the Mercuryo gateway.
In 2023, we’ll be introducing TFT-fiat gateways into the Mastodon weblet (see below) and across the whole grid ecosystem to make it even easier to use grid services.
- As believers in truly decentralized models, we have repeatedly questioned how to exist without centralized exchanges. In August, TFT was delisted from the Liquid Exchange, the result of their acquisition by FTX earlier this year. A blessing in disguise, after seeing the monumental FTX crash which affected Liquid (which could have resulted in a loss of funds, although the exchange Liquid “hopes to return customer funds in 2023”) and sent ripple effects across the entire industry.
Part of our aim next year will be to introduce concepts like the liquidity pool and P2P DeFi wallet to provide a resilient, sustainable, and native financial system for the Internet of Internets, which strengthens the foundation of the ecosystem by enhancing the stability and liquidity of the ThreeFold Token.
Partnerships
We doubled down on commitment to follow our values, particularly when it comes to collaborations and partnerships.
- ThreeFold signed a Head of Terms in December 2022 to officialize a public-private-partnership with a country in East Africa in Q1 2023. This partnership will support the roll out of a decentralized Internet infrastructure to support fintech services, e-residency and more.
- ThreeFold is on track to support international communities to launch their digital nations (AKA network states).
- ThreeFold & OpenNebula opened a collaboration to explore cooperation in open source & edge computing
- Alongside 27 organizations such as Atos and Deutsche Telekom, ThreeFold is part of Structura-X – a lighthouse project ensuring common European infrastructure services that meet Gaia-X requirements.
Team on the Ground
We were on the ground in strategic locations and events all over the world, sharing about ThreeFold and expanding the community.
- ICT Tanzania (update 1, 2, & 3) in Zanzibar
- Consensus 2022, Austin
- World Blockchain Summit Dubai
- Visiting Lebanon
Mastodon, the Fediverse & ThreeFold
The aftermath of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was a mass digital migration towards Mastodon (up from 300,000 to 2.5 million monthly active users). We supported this trend towards decentralized social media platforms, and saw that ThreeFold could be of great support to Mastodon!
- Blog: Twitter, Mastodon, and Why We’re Evolving the Internet
- Community Call recording focused around Mastodon
- We have been working on a weblet to deploy Mastodon servers on top of the Grid, and Mastodon powered by ThreeFold is now ready for testing! Your feedback is valued, and be sure to spread the word!
- Read the manual on how you can deploy your own Mastodon on TF Grid here.
- For more: Fediverse section of the Forum
Q4 Community Calls
In Q4, we held a series of Community Calls aimed at bringing the community together while updating on, exploring, and discussing key topics related to the ThreeFold Ecosystem! Watch them here:
- Grid Utilization
- Tokenomics & Regional Internet
- Mastodon & the Fediverse
- How to Create & Monetize Weblets
- Farming
- End-Of-Year Call
Wrapping up
In a fast-moving and ever-changing world, it is our belief that ThreeFold is one of the few projects out there that can genuinely enable a better future. We are driven by our mission and vision, guided by our values, and upheld by our global community.
2023 will be about continuing to improve the technology and simplify the grid experience, bringing to life the Regional Internets and Digital Twin concepts, introducing partnerships we’ve been alluding to this year, and furthering the decentralization of ThreeFold by empowering the community to take action independently.
ThreeFold is all of ours, and as a decentralized movement, we all share the responsibility to drive this project forward in meaningful ways to the best of our own abilities.
ThreeFold is the future. Based on decentralization and open source paradigms, we are a strong movement that continues to grow resilience. We are hungry for a better tomorrow, and ready to continue the journey towards the actualization of our common vision.
Here’s to 2022!
Here we come, 2023!
Together We Build!
