- What is the Friend Unifying Platform, and why is Liquid Software important in 2018?
The Friend Unifying Platform is a next generation operating system that is built on top of the internet. It has separated the kernel from application logic and user interface so that it can work across a network.
Traditionally, an operating system is an all-in-one solution for a PC that is meant to run in an offline environment. The internet is an add-on, which allows you to view websites and online services. Some early systems were designed to work similarly to how Friend is designed. But at that time, the Internet wasn’t ready for the bandwidth that would be required for these systems to operate adequately.
Friend is built to run online. It’s brains, the kernel, is written as a server program. When you connect to it through your access point - a web address - it uploads the Friend desktop environment into your web browser. Once fully loaded, you actually work entirely on the client side. Servers are only used when data is read or written.
The result is a super fast desktop environment where data is encrypted before it enters any server or network stream. This is orders of magnitude more secure than when encrypting data in the cloud.
This kind of system is required for Liquid Software to work. Applications are secured and animated on the user’s device, and can flow through a peer-to-peer network of active end-user environments. For example from your home computer to your business computer. Or from your smartphone to your laptop. A server based application can not do this, as it is tied to the server environment.
Peer-2-peer networks, Liquid Software and client side encryption has never been more important. As governments fight each other and get ever more paranoid, end users need technology that protects them and their digital life online.
- Which industries and processes will the Friend Cloud Computing platform disrupt?
Friend offers technology comparable to the Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Cloud, Azure and AWS. And it is an alternative to Chrome OS with uncompromising web access. This offers users an enterprise network in which to build solutions and deploy applications - at a low cost. And it offers users access to secure cloud computing without having to sign expensive or complicated contracts.
We believe Friend will heavily disrupt the hybrid cloud market. And it will certainly disrupt personal computing in the long run as a new “fifth operating system” along with Desktop Linux and Chrome OS.
- How will you make the developer community interested in the opportunities offered by Friend Unifying Platform?
We will distribute plenty of video tutorials, detailed but easy to read documentation and build a great developer community. We have already started on this, and have already seen commits from developers in the open source space. Additionally, we will set up a great bounty program so that our company, the community and sponsors can incentivise developer activity. Finally, we will make sure to be present on events and shows around the world. This will seed interest and give us the opportunity to spread our message to developers in person, which is very impactful.
- What makes FriendUP ICO unique and notable among other distributed computing ideas?
FriendUP has come so far already. It is a very mature project, and it’s available in a working form - even though it’s not yet decentralized and integrated with Blockchain technology. By supporting our ICO, you are empowering us to realize our roadmap. As can be seen both from our business team as well as our technical team; we can deliver, and we have proven this to our partners and customers over the last few years.
One of our unique features is to do work and offer encryption and computing on end-user devices. A lot of the other projects focus on server technology. We have a missing piece here, in that we focus on end-user applications and services running at full speed. We are Friend, closer to the user. And we give the Blockchain space its very own operating system, just like Linux gave the open source community one in the past.
To top it off, we are doing the first ICO from and in Norway, a country which is renowned for its transparency, (social) democratic values, fairness, lowest score on the inequality index of the Western countries combined with high digital competence and saturation in society. These are values and traits that go very well with the core values of Blockchain and we are embedding these into the projects and attempting to make our ICO an example to follow.
Finally, a private company in Norway has to report more than a public company in e.g. UK and the US. Hence, the token-holders will have full insight as to how the project is managed. We are already working on how to embed good governance into the token and slowly transform the utility such that the Friend Network and Friend Store becomes autonomous, owned by and to a large degree governed by its users.
- Who are your target users and how do you intend to monetize the platform?
Our target users are developers and regular users who are web-native. This means users who regularly use web apps and online services like Discord, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Dropbox, but who may want more control over their own privacy and security.
Friend allows developers to be part in building a new ecosystem with own community infrastructure. An arena where all of the different Blockchain projects are represented and integrated in the Friend operating system.
Users will be able to create their own virtual computers where they can play games, work, chat and interact with others - and they can participate as consumers or active community members who contribute back with creativity and friendship.
The platform incentivises users to offer infrastructure for tokens. Additionally, even end-users can participate with running services in their browser based Friend desktop environments. And all trading in the Friend Store uses the FRND (Friend Network Token) token.
Our commercial business will work hard on on-boarding businesses to use the Friend Network infrastructure. In fact, we have set aside a substantial portion of the ICO budget to facilitate this by assisting complimentary technology projects with tech- and business development resources and in some cases even funds (if required). This will accelerate the onboarding of key projects and complimentary technology to the Friend Network and we will help them utilize the Friend Store to their own benefit and that of the ecosystem we are building/ serving.
These will lead to increased activity on the network, in the Friend Store and of course in Friend Software Corporation by extension - which is what gives life to our team. Commercial businesses will have great benefits from using the Friend Network for their cloud service needs. It is bound to happen, as Blockchain technologies become reliable and can showcase their versatility.
- What technologies and devices will the Friend Unifying Platform run on?
The Friend Workspace runs on any web enabled device. You could build your own Friend terminal using a Raspberry PI. You can run it on your Android Phone. On your Windows, Mac or Linux notebook.
Friend Core, the Friend Server, runs on most Linux distributions, both on 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, ARM and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC). It is portable to any Posix compliant platform, so it will be available everywhere. We’re even building a version of it for Android phones, enabling users to use their Workspace and apps on their smartphone while they are offline.
- How do you see the role of the Friend Unifying Platform in the Ethereum ecosystem?
We believe we add a direct user interface to the Ethereum ecosystem. We’re making Ethereum point-and-click. Or touch. And we abstract away all of the complexity, helping to make interactions with the Blockchain more mainstream. We are taking an important step by doing so, because it will help making Ethereum a success in the “real world”. For your mom and dad. And for your grandmother too. Also, we will help interconnect the Ethereum ecosystem with other ecosystems… connecting everything.
- Please tell us more about the Five Pillars of FriendUP ICO.
We aim to punch through all of the surveillance and exploitation of consumers by the large, international social networks and cloud service providers. It’s not that we believe that everybody is evil, it’s just that we really - really - need user controlled and user owned infrastructure to play a role in our daily lives. Decentralisation is much more than a nice-to-have. It’s much more than the latest trend. It’s a must for democracy and freedom. And we really believe that we can make a difference. That’s why we put our Five Pillars front and center when we evangelize about the project. And this is also why we need to a different revenue model that does not depend on advertisement, feeding on users’ data and other unfriendly models.
- What are the next crucial steps in your roadmap for the coming years?
We need to build a solid clustering engine and a robust and secure peer-to-peer network. This will bolster our goals for decentralization, privacy and empowerment. Then we need to make sure that our governance in operation can anticipate, handle and adapt the network to the regulatory landscape. We need to find a symbiotic sweet spot where users can remain free while governments remain reassured.
Finally, we need to crack the server-side encryption problem. This isn’t technically solved yet, so we are on the lookout for projects who seek a solution.
There’s just so much we can talk about when it comes to our roadmap. It’s quite extensive. And it is a decentralized mirror image of what we’re building for the Enterprise and SMB markets in our commercial business - and in our open source project as well.
- What is the utility of FRND tokens?
As mentioned above, FRND tokens are meant to incentivize the growth of our infrastructure network. Additionally, it’s meant to offer users a useful payment vessel for apps, services and resources. We will integrate with recognized partners and thus facilitate token-token exchange and token-fiat exchange.
Lastly, it’s a means to interact with our governance model, which allows users to offer support for technical decisions regarding our protocols and technological implementations. We intend to increase the token utility in such a way that the users and holders of FRND gradually will take over the governance of the Friend Network and Friend Store. You will be able to earn tokens on solving technological challenges for the whole community. FRND is all about participation and freedom. We believe that this makes a real difference and that it is crucial to a platform like Friend.
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