The ThreeFold community consists of many different roles creating a whole ecosystem that contributes to the growth of the ThreeFold Grid and makes it more reliable and stable. Today, we’re spotlighting the farming community, the backbone of the ThreeFold Grid.

🔗Who are the farmers and what exactly do these farmers do?

Think of a ThreeFold Farmer as a digital pioneer who connects their capacity to the ThreeFold Grid, becoming a cloud service provider. They come from all corners of the globe, driven by a common goal: to contribute to the growth of ThreeFold’s decentralized cloud infrastructure. Currently, we boast approximately 950 farmers running an impressive ±2500 nodes. This translates to a whopping capacity of:

• Cores: 64,290
• RAM: 434.85 TB
• SSD: 8.46 PB
• HDD: 20 PB

The farming community keeps the digital gears turning. Whether they purchase a 3Node from the marketplace or build their nodes, they’re providing essential capacity to the ThreeFold Grid. In return for their contributions, they’re rewarded with ThreeFold Tokens (TFTs), the currency of the ThreeFold ecosystem.

Farmers are rewarded based on their uptime—the number of hours, minutes, and seconds their node has been online. This data is meticulously tracked by ThreeFold’s blockchain, TFChain, and used to determine their monthly rewards. However, we’re always evolving and we just passed a vote on the ThreeFold DAO where we decided that, in the future, farmers would be rewarded based on their utilization.

ThreeFold Farmers not only provide capacity but also take the opportunity of ThreeFold being an open-source project to develop scripts and tools like a Python script for minting, a telegram for liquidity pool USDC/TFT, and Telegram channels for their local community where English is not their primary language so that they can get help when they need it, and much more.

The ThreeFold farming community is an integral part of our decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). A farmer’s participation in the DAO discussions and proposals is pivotal as we chart the course for the grid’s evolution, from our current version 3.14 release and beyond. Together, we’re actively building the grid’s future, thanks to our dedicated farmers’ collaborative efforts. Join us, share your ideas, and let’s shape the future of the ThreeFold Grid together.

🔗The Future of the Farming Community

🔗The TF Cooperative

ThreeFold is transitioning the management of TF Grid to a cooperative, empowering all of us to work toward our common goals more effectively. This shift represents a step towards a more collaborative and inclusive future for the TFGrid. As we enter the commercialization phase of the project, a cooperative model also brings a trusted form of decentralized governance and will enable us to bring more reliability to the grid.

The formation of the ThreeFold Cooperative (TF COOP) brings several planned changes for farmers and their interaction with the TFGrid:

• Democratic Governance: TF COOP introduces a system where farmers can vote on decisions based on their TFT holdings (1 TFT = 1 vote), giving them a voice in the cooperative’s direction.
• Farming Rewards: Farmers will continue to earn rewards based on the quality of their nodes and network uptime. This encourages high standards and benefits both farmers and users.
• Compliance: Farmers must follow KYC/AML (Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering) rules for transparency and accountability.
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Larger farmers may sign formal contracts with DMCC or TF COOP, providing stability and predictability.
• Capacity Resale and Utilization Rewards: TF COOP will resell capacity and distribute profits. Farmers receive 50% of the revenue from their node utilization.
• Node Information and Transparency: Farmers can benefit from tracking more node data in the explorer, helping potential users select quality nodes.
• Governance Involvement: Farmers, as cooperative members, can impact management and operations, aligning their interests with the TFGrid’s success.

🔗Farming Pool

Farming Pools are a new feature planned for version 4.0 that helps improve trust and quality in our network. Farmers join these pools and agree to standards like uptime and response time. They can set their prices for services like storage and computing power. By staking tokens, farmers commit to these standards and risk losing some of their stakes if they don’t meet their promises. This keeps the network reliable and fair while allowing farmers more control over their services.

These pools can also act as hubs for supporting farmers with training and help them understand if their nodes are working well. Sales of preconfigured hardware is an additional optional function of the pools, while all pools operate as a business that takes a margin on the farming rewards of the farmers belonging to the pool. Beyond support, the added value for the farmers is that pools ensure a level of service and quality that can attract users and bring additional revenues to the farmers, including the potential of active marketing of the pool’s capacity.

🔗Conclusion

The farming community plays a key role in the smooth operation and growth of the ThreeFold Grid. These farmers shape the grid’s future by offering the capacity for a more decentralized digital world. Their work goes beyond earning rewards, as they contribute nodes to a global network and share resources and tools that strengthen the community, which will be showcased in our upcoming blogs. Thanks to their efforts, the grid is thriving and paving the way for a fairer, more connected world.

🔗Get involved:

• Join our farmer’s chat to talk with the community

• Learn about expanding the grid or adding on top of it.

• Stay updated with news and community discussions.

🔗Be a cloud service provider, not just a cloud consumer.

With ThreeFold’s autonomous technology, anyone can be a cloud service provider without any technical expertise. You can be the Internet, for yourself and for those around you.

Being a cloud service provider is a thrilling opportunity to tap into a market worth trillions of dollars – which today is being shared by a relatively small number of companies. This calls for change – a chance to level the playing field and allow more players to benefit from this lucrative industry. But it’s not just about financial gain. By entering the cloud services space, you become a catalyst for change. You’re not just providing a service; you’re creating connections, bridging gaps, and fostering inclusivity. The people around you benefit, too. Lower costs, improved performance, data sovereignty and greater privacy are just some of the advantages they’ll enjoy with your services.

Finally, by contributing to a more sustainable edge cloud, you’re not only ensuring a better future for yourself, but also for the planet. The adoption of a decentralized autonomous cloud reduces energy consumption and minimizes the environmental impact of data transfer, contributing to global sustainability efforts and a greener future.

Best of all, you’re not just investing in technology - you’re investing in a sustainable, connected and rewarding future, powered by the people, for the people. It’s ultimately good for you, good for the people around you, and good for the planet.

🔗How to become a cloud provider?

ThreeFold enables you to become a cloud service provider by hosting a 3node, bringing local capacity where people need it most and providing compute, storage and AI capabilities. After setting up this node, being verified and sharing capacity on our grid, your contribution is rewarded.

Join the movement and Become a Host!

🔗Participate in the ThreeFold L2 Validator Program

The ThreeFold Blockchain records transactions that happen on the ThreeFold Grid, including Internet capacity (farming), Internet capacity provisioning (smart contract for IT), identity, account metadata and more.

Validator nodes support the network by remaining in sync with the ThreeFold Blockchain and recording the chain’s data while validating and/or injecting transactions. Essentially, a validator stores and validates transactions aka, mining blocks.

With about a hundred L2 validator nodes to join the network, clients will be able to rely on a distributed, peer-to-peer network instead of relying on centralized services.

Many people and organizations rallied to run validator nodes using computing and bandwidth resources – but more are needed to allow ThreeFold to continue to grow. The rest of this post describes how you can help and what’s in it for you.

🔗Why run a ThreeFold L2 Validator?

L2 Validators store the records of the ThreeFold Blockchain, the ThreeFold DAO and the development of side chains on the ThreeFold Grid. There are only 50 in the first batch and 37 have already been verified – meaning there are only 13 spots left! Running an L2 validator requires 2,000,000 TFT staked in order to begin validating. This 2,000,000 TFT is the minimum bond needed to begin validating blocks. A validator also earns voting rights in the ThreeFold DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), which is responsible for the operations of the ThreeFold Blockchain and ThreeFold Grid.

Running a validator node on a computer isn’t a complicated task. For many of us who love ThreeFold, we want to support the decentralization of the peer-to-peer Internet, and running a validator node is a great way to do that. Also, it is a unique and revolutionary project to have in your room or office. Running a validator node requires little electricity, close to zero technical knowledge, and no real time commitments. 

🔗Validator Node Rewards

For their commitment, and as an incentive for their continued participation, validators are rewarded with a share of the ThreeFold Grid’s revenue. By helping the network reach consensus, validators also earn rewards for processing transactions into new blocks or checking the work of other validators because that’s what keeps the ThreeFold Blockchain secure. A minimum of 5% yield is foreseen in the next 2 years.

🔗Join the Peer-to-Peer Revolution

ThreeFold is realizing the initial promise of an open-source, peer-to-peer Internet owned by the people. Anyone can become a validator and participate in the decentralization of the Internet economy. If you are interested in running one, just follow these simple steps:

• Step 1: Create an account (wallet) with the ThreeFold Connect app.
• Step 2: Buy the required amount of TFT to reserve your validator. Find all TFT buying options here.
• Step 3: Log into the ThreeFold Forum using ThreeFold Connect and go to the L2 Validator Signup category.
• Step 4: Follow the registration instructions to become a L2 Validator, and review the checklist of your application before submission.

Someone from the ThreeFold community will get in touch with you within the next few days to welcome you to the ThreeFold universe. We’ll have a brief call to verify your identity and wallet treasury to confirm your application. The successful verification process secures your spot as a ThreeFold L2 Validator.

After introducing the ThreeFold Grid in part one and diving deep into storage and compute, we’re back with part 4 to look at the networking aspects of the ThreeFold Grid.

Computer networking is a rather complex phenomenon with a thankfully intuitive outcome: you send messages from one place to another. We all understand that our digital devices become a lot less interesting when they are not connected to the Internet. However, networking is not just Internet, and when it comes to building a new Internet, it’s important to understand what that means.

The existing Internet can be defined as a global set of networks and protocols that enable us to do things like load web pages and use apps that rely on external data. It depends on lots of underlying infrastructure, including fiber optic cables running along the ocean floor, our home routers and their connection to an Internet service provider (ISP), lots of cell service towers, and an increasing number of satellites. All of that makes the Internet possible, and it’s still required for a new Internet to function.

ThreeFold uses and builds new protocols to create a network that is interoperable with the existing Internet. These include private overlay networks, the Planetary Network based on Yggdrasil, and various interfaces to the public Internet. Let’s see how they work.

🔗Private overlay networks

Every deployment on the ThreeFold Grid belongs to a network, which is one of the Grid primitives. These networks allow data to be transmitted between workloads in a private and secure manner. They are called overlay networks because they pass traffic over some underlying network. That could be within a single node or between nodes on infrastructure provided by a farmer. The Grid uses software called WireGuard for this purpose, a simple, fast, and secure option among its alternatives.

By means of encryption, the traffic on a private overlay network is unreadable to any other device on that network. Likewise, the workloads within the private network have no visibility of the underlying network. Individuals who deploy workloads can access their networks over a secure tunnel, assuming that one of the nodes in the network is reachable from the public Internet. This is suitable for workload administration and some private applications. For public services and peer-to-peer communication, the ThreeFold Grid provides other solutions.

🔗Planetary Network

The Planetary Network is an implementation of the Yggdrasil Network, which is a next generation approach to network routing. It is a peer-to-peer solution where all traffic is encrypted and takes the shortest path to its destination. These features make it highly compatible with the ethos and goals of the ThreeFold Grid: privacy, security, and efficiency. The design also allows nodes, workloads, and users to communicate freely without relying on centralized intermediaries.

Many ThreeFold Farmers connect their nodes to a home router which blocks all inbound traffic by default. This is a sensible feature that doesn’t interfere with most Internet usage (enthusiasts who want to host their own website or a gaming server might bypass this, for example). However, nodes on the Grid need to be reachable, especially in order to receive workload definitions from deployers.

The Planetary Network solves this by accepting inbound traffic through an outbound connection to a publicly accessible peer. You can think of this like making a call to an operator and then waiting for another call to be routed to you on that line. Even if your phone is set to block all incoming calls, someone can still reach you if they can reach the operator.

This also provides a way for workloads to communicate with one another and be reachable by users. Anyone can enable the Planetary Network on their own device to access sites and services in a very secure and private way. While the ThreeFold Grid is designed to be fully interoperable with the existing Internet, the Planetary Network provides an alternative which can sit side by side in a seamless way.

🔗Reliable Message Bus

Using the Planetary Network, nodes and Grid users can send messages over the Reliable Message Bus. Notably, it is used for the delivery of workload definitions as mentioned earlier. Zero-OS supports some other RMB messages as well, for doing things like checking available capacity on a node in real time. RMB is a general purpose protocol that can be used by developers in their applications. It queries the ThreeFold Blockchain as a kind of address book for the Planetary Network, enabling nodes and users to find each other in a decentralized way.

🔗Public IPs and Web Gateways

Finally, let’s see how the Grid can offer services over the public Internet using public IP addresses and web gateways. Everytime we type a domain name into our browser, like threefold.io, it is resolved to an IP address. The browser then forms a connection with that address to retrieve the site we’re looking for. Reviving a theme from earlier, that IP must be publicly reachable.

🔗Public IPs

We’re in the midst of a shift from the older IPv4 standard to the newer IPv6 standard. While IPv6 has plenty of addresses for every device on the planet and many more, it hasn’t been universally adopted yet, and IPv4 addresses are in short supply. You likely have one assigned to your router at home, and these days, even getting a second one from your ISP can be a difficult and expensive proposition.

The ThreeFold Grid allows farmers who own blocks of IPv4 addresses to rent them out to deployers. These addresses get attached to individual workloads which are then reachable over the public Internet. A deployer could then assign their own domain name to that IP and host a website there. This is a very flexible way to make Grid deployments publicly available, but it comes at a relatively high cost.

🔗Web Gateways

Web gateways are another way to make workloads on the ThreeFold Grid available over the public Internet. In this case, the farmer may provide a domain name that points to one of their nodes which is publicly reachable. Deployers are then able to reserve a subdomain, like explorer.threefold.io is a subdomain of threefold.io, that routes traffic to their workload. It is also possible for a deployer to point their own domain to the gateway node which then routes traffic to the appropriate workloads.

We glossed over a bit in the earlier description of domain name to IP address resolution. In fact, multiple domains can point to a single IP address and this is common practice among existing web hosts. Adding similar functionality to the Grid helps to ease the demand for IPv4 addresses and is a lower cost solution for deployers than renting a dedicated IP. The web gateway also serves to enhance security and reliability of Grid-hosted services.

The gateway provides a connection from the public Internet to the secure private overlay networks that all workloads use. However, this is not a standard network connection but instead a network socket, which provides security through separation. This is something like passing along the contents of mail pieces without their envelopes. Web gateways also enable redundancy, as multiple gateways can point to the same workload, and multiple workloads can serve the same set of gateways.

When we say the ThreeFold Grid scales limitlessly, this is one of the ways that’s true. Many nodes, many gateways, many applications, and many users can all fit into this model. Deployers can start with a single virtual machine and a single public IP like in the example I’ll use to wrap up this piece below, then ramp up to a globally distributed and highly redundant system as their requirements grow.

🔗Send, receive, complete

Now we’ve seen how the ThreeFold Grid handles networking. From private and secure communication between workloads, to next generation peer-to-peer communication and full compatibility with the existing Internet, these offerings are comprehensive. Not only that, but they can be pretty darn fun to play with too.

In my own recent experience, I deployed a virtual machine on the Grid with a public IP and hosted a simple website with a map of nodes on the Grid that I’d been working on. I was able to quickly share it with some colleagues and members of the community. It went from a project I was tinkering with on my own computer to a live site on the Internet in a matter of minutes, thanks especially to the networking features of the ThreeFold Grid.

For the final piece of this series, we’ll see how everything comes together to turn computer code into a meaningful digital experience. Stay tuned!

Since the launch of ThreeFold Grid 3.0, TFT has been available on three blockchains – Stellar, Binance Smart Chain and the Substrate-based ThreeFold Blockchain (aka TF Chain).

There are already active bridges that connect Stellar to Binance Smart Chain and TF Chain, improving the accessibility and availability of TFT, while also connecting the ThreeFold ecosystem to external blockchain networks.

Learn more about TF Chain in our blog post here.

🔗What are bridges and why are they important?

The concept of bridges in crypto is similar to a bridge in the physical world. Bridges in the real world simply connect two different locations and communities so that the people can travel back and forth and resources can be exchanged freely.

Similarly, using bridges in blockchain allows users to easily transfer tokens and other crypto assets between two or more networks – regardless of the different protocols, tooling, and governance models these networks have. Simply put, a bridge ensures a secure interoperability between different blockchains.

ThreeFold uses blockchain bridges to connect external blockchain networks to the ThreeFold ecosystem. The bridging mechanisms we’ve implemented allow TFT to be transferred securely between different blockchains. Currently, we’ve established two 2-way bridges:

• Stellar <> Binance Smart Chain
• Stellar <> TF Chain

But what is the difference between the 3 chains?

Stellar is an open-source network for storing and moving digital assets, and still remains the main blockchain for the minting of TFT and distribution of farming rewards. Until the launch of TF Chain with Grid 3.0, only TFT living on Stellar were accepted for the reservation of Internet capacity on the ThreeFold Grid. 

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is a standalone, parallel Binance chain that is a leading DeFi ecosystem next to Ethereum. On BSC, TFT is implemented as a cross-chain asset, allowing anyone to connect to the bridge using Metamask or Trust Wallet – the most popular Web 3 wallets in the world.

TF Chain was built on the Substrate framework with the purpose of decentralizing user-farmer relationships on the ThreeFold Grid. It has its own native form of TFT, which can be bridged back and forth from Stellar-based TFT. This model will be implemented for other chains in the future, for interoperability and cross-chain features between blockchain and DeFi ecosystems and the ThreeFold Grid.

🔗What’s new with TF Chain?

TF Chain represents a leap forward for simplicity in payments for capacity reservations and a move towards greater decentralization of the systems that support the ThreeFold Grid. With the launch of ThreeFold Grid 3.0, TF Chain became the official record of ThreeFold farms and nodes, and brought peer-to-peer billing based on smart contracts for workload deployments on the ThreeFold Grid. 

For now, minting will remain on Stellar but reservations of nodes and capacity on ThreeFold Grid 3.0 are already executed via TF Chain. Bridges were established between Stellar and TF Chain to facilitate payments, e.g. if you pay for a workload deployment in Stellar TFT, this payment needs to be bridged to TF  Chain’s native TFT to fund the smart contract.

🔗The two-way bridge between Stellar & BSC 

Until recently, the bridge between Stellar and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was one-way only: from BSC to Stellar. Even though it was possible to transfer TFT from Stellar to BSC via  command line, this was only an option for tech-savvy people. Now, you can also deposit TFT from Stellar to BSC using the bridge with a proper UI, as you can see in the image below.

When depositing from TFT Stellar, please be sure that both addresses and memo are as indicated in the instructions or the TFT you transfer will be lost forever. To facilitate the process, a QR code is generated and can be scanned using the ThreeFold Connect app, automatically filling in the right address and memo on your behalf.

As Binance Smart Chain is a more expensive chain, a fee of 50 TFT will be automatically charged for the bridge from Stellar to BSC. Find the full step-by-step guide for the Stellar-BSC bridge here. 

🔗What’s next? 

As the ThreeFold ecosystem continues to grow, we’re looking into building more bridges (e.g. Cosmos, Ethereum) to improve the accessibility of TFT and simplify the onboarding of blockchain and DeFi projects on the ThreeFold Grid. TF Chain will play an important role in the further development of the People’s Internet, so give our blog post on TF Chain a read here. 

Try out the Stellar-BSC bridge here and visit our forum to share your experiences.

🔗The ThreeFold Grid

In January we launched ThreeFold Grid 2.4 on Mainnet and evolved it through version 2.8. In September, we launched ThreeFold Grid 3.0 on testnet and just this week, we launched TF Grid 3.0 on mainnet, with limited capacity for now.

ThreeFold Grid 3 brings a massive leap forward in the decentralization of the ThreeFold Grid and makes for a much simpler user experience for farmers and grid users.

The starting point ThreeFold Grid 3:

• What’s New in TF Grid 3.0
• Manual

🔗Notable Tech Developments

Other new developments on the tech side included QSFS (Quantum Safe Storage System), TF Chain, Smart Contracts and more (take a look at the new tech section we launched with the new threefold.io this year and of course our knowledge base).

🔗The ThreeFold Token (TFT)

2021 was all about bringing TFT to more chains and making TFT more accessible, with the BSC integration, TF Chain, and 1inch.

Read about our TFGrid & TFT Price Simulation.

🔗ThreeFold Farming

Today, the ThreeFold Grid is live in 57 countries with more than 1,450 Nodes online. Thanks to all the Farmers who both built or bought and connected 3Nodes!

In 2021, we introduced a certified farming program and farming rewards 3.0 which will apply from ThreeFold Grid 3.1 onwards (end Jan). We also established weekly 3Node updates to keep you in the loop at all times.

🔗Partnerships

Throughout 2021, we announced key partnerships with ownCloud, DigiThree Labs, CasperLabs and many more. Most recently, two of these partnerships were featured in the news, TAG and Computecoin. All of these will be launched in 2022.

🔗2022 Preview (Q1)

In the first part of 2022, we are launching our grid.

Read our launch plan and offer feedback!

> OUR LAUNCHPLAN Q1 2022

🔗The ThreeFold Token

Now is the time to buy TFT! (Please take a look at the launch plan above.)

In 2022, our goal for the ThreeFold Token is to be available at as many entry points as possible. We’re planning integrations with many ecosystems like Cosmos to achieve great networking effects for the money networks. There will be discounts for Utilization based on pre-purchasing of TFT, and more.

🔗Wrapping Things Up

There’s no other project out there like ThreeFold. TF Grid 3 is here, the grid is continuously growing across the world, and this collective effort is uniquely positioned to truly decentralize the Internet. Remember: ThreeFold is inevitable.

So, here we go! You can expect many more updates soon on what was covered above. And may the year 2022 be full of health, happiness and opportunities for all of us!

Please be reminded we are a decentralized movement, we need your help to let us all “BE THE INTERNET.” Become a farmer, register for a validator, contribute to our movement, develop a solution on top of TF Grid … If you’re not sure how to help out but want to, please get in touch on our two-way chat or here on the forum.