Questions about the current state of the SAFE Network

I have been a forum member since 2017, but since then progress with the network seems confusingly slow.

For example, if I visit the Example DApps page at https://hub.safedev.org/dapps, I read

“Example DApps that were created on the Alpha 2 Network. (No longer live as we transition to the Shared Node Network)”

Does that mean that these DApps no longer work?

Some years ago, I installed the Safe browser on my computer, but sites created on it would only run locally.

Is there yet a Safe network I can connect to, in order to upload my websites and access other websites on the network?

And is there a version of the Safe browser that works on this network?

When I first signed up for this three years ago, my plan was to understand the technology so that when the system went live, I could hit the ground running.

I still want to do this, but I still don’t have a working browser, or access to the Safe network.

So, when will the Shared Node Network be ready, and where can I download the code for a working browser?

Hey Malcolm, nice to see you again.

The current status is that we’re approaching a new test network, which we expect will be almost functionally complete (‘Fleming’) will have almost all the functionality of the final network. Just a couple of things like updates will be to be added after that. So it will include Earning (test) tokens for example, paying to store data, perpetual web etc, and I’m hopeful a truly decentralised filesystem using CRDTs.

Any old apps, including the ones I built will need updating to work on Fleming because the way the data types work has changed, and the APIs are being updated to cope with that. But the essentials are the same so this should not be a big job for each existing app.

It is still possible to play with the earlier code by running a local test network, but most of us are waiting to try the new network. Jim Collinson has shown of some excellent user experience flows and mock ups of the UI for the Safe Network App so it should be a very interesting experience.

3 Likes

Thank you for your reply.

Do we have any timescales as to when Fleming might be ready?

Is it possible to test any of the Fleming apps locally before it goes live?

1 Like

No published timescales (check the weekly development updates to get an idea when it my be).

What you can test depends on which API you want to use. The test network won’t deliver all the APIs immediately, so most testing will be using the command line (CLI), or with Rust based apps. Bindings for other languages will follow, so it depends what you want to do and how you want to build it.

1 Like