A network has vowed to become “the first truly decentralized and anonymous alternative to the regular internet.”
While the online world touches every aspect of our lives today, it’s fraught with issues. Digital footprints have created lingering concerns about privacy — with high-profile data breaches exposing confidential information.
There’s also the threat of censorship, with some countries blocking sites and jamming communications.
According to Unigrid, today’s internet is centralized “and controlled by big businesses running huge data centers,” putting the personal data of everyday users in their hands.
Its network has been described as a “low-level backbone” for a truly decentralized internet. Gridnodes deliver storage space and communication channels and double up as a swarm of proxies to ensure that data remains encrypted at all times.
And whereas conventional blockchains use a vertical structure to store data — attaching new blocks to the ones that came before — the Unigrid network takes a different approach, sharding data across an ever growing number of blockchains for “redundancy, speed, security and the ability to scale.”
Getting to know Unigrid
Unigrid believes its solution can further enhance internet adoption and usage — all while addressing the pain points in the cloud computing sector, which include high prices and limited product offerings.
The network’s co-founder Adam Waldenberg said: “Unigrid will provide the world with a global and democratic network built for the people, by the people.”
Waldenberg is confident that Unigrid will enhance internet efficiency, adding: “With redundant storage and services on a global scale, we can put an end to unscheduled downtimes and make them a thing of the past.”
Outages have been a hot-button topic for some time — with Amazon Web Services recently suffering its third bout of disruption in 2021. A number of big brands were affected, including Coinbase, Robinhood, Disney and Netflix.
Unigrid also hopes to broaden internet access by using blockchain technology to lower costs.
Disrupting a $300 billion market
According to Unigrid, the cloud computing market is worth a staggering $300 billion at present — and these figures are only set to grow in the coming years.
To spread adoption, the Unigrid Foundation is planning a series of hackathons to educate developers — and the organization also plans to partner with universities and scientific facilities, donating storage space on the network.
Just some of the use cases set out by Unigrid include delivering a secure environment where medical records can be shared with trusted parties. Data on the network is also delivered from fast servers with low latency, and new decentralized apps can be created using common languages. And with high fees on the Ethereum network forcing NFT creators to store content on centralized Web 2.0 services, Unigrid says it will offer the perfect place for storing unique images and files.
According to Unigrid, many projects claim to be decentralized — but in reality, many do not allow nodes to democratically contribute to the network. The project adds: “This effectively moves the centralization to another point of failure rather than solving the underlying problem once and for all.”
Unigrid has a data center based in Gothenburg, Sweden — with hundreds of servers ready and raring to go.
Although the network is still in its infancy, Unigrid and the Unigrid Foundation have big plans. In the coming year, they’ve several projects lined up. For starters, they look forward to integrating data storage.
They also intend to introduce VPN connections to the network. Finally, they’ll be releasing a new JavaFX wallet.
