Dubai, UAE, is bringing the power of blockchain and distributed networking to its neighborhoods.
ThreeFold, a decentralized peer-to-peer internet solution, has partnered with real estate developer Paradise Hills to add their ThreeFold servers to approximately 170 homes in the Paradise Hill project in Dubai.
The servers, known as “3Node,” provide the edge computing and internet storage needed to run decentralized applications and internet services – away from the public internet people are accustomed to today. The initiative will provide residents, businesses, developers and the government with a secure cloud infrastructure to store and process their data locally.
“This historic collaboration is the first pilot in a series of initiatives by ThreeFold to help expand the digital landscape of the United Arab Emirates,” said Adnan Fatayerji, cofounder of ThreeFold.
Founded in 2018, the ThreeFold grid is a neutral, peer-to-peer network of storage and compute capacity and currently counts 3,000+ nodes distributed in over 71 countries. These nodes produce more than 40,000,000 gigabytes of capacity, making it one of the world’s largest blockchain projects.
While in a classic storage system, data is centralized, the ThreeFold Cloud uses a dispersed storage. You can imagine it as a puzzle of twenty pieces. The data gets chopped into twenty blocks. These blocks can be saved anywhere on the Grid.
So, a hacker needs to be in all places at once and have access codes to all nodes. Thanks to this technology, you own your data and its storage is highly secure.
With the ThreeFold Grid, users can build or migrate all applications or workloads that can be run on Kubernetes or S3 (open storage data containers). The workload execution is ensured by Smart Contracts for IT and is completely isolated from public networks.
According to Fatayerji, the cloud neighborhood initiative will support the development of edge computing, smart cities and IoT (Internet of Things) alongside the Digital Dubai vision set by the Emirates leadership. Since its inception, the Digital Dubai Office has launched over 130 initiatives in partnership with government and private sector entities for smart cities, AI principles and blockchain strategies.
The initiative echoes the 2010 rollout of Google Fiber, Google‘s parent company Alphabet‘s attempt to bring “next-generation” internet speeds to communities through fiber optic cables. However, its launch prompted traditional internet service providers to deliver higher speeds much faster than Google had anticipated, slowing Fiber’s expansion.
As for blockchain in real estate, the growing proptech space has ushered in a number of companies and tech stacks surrounding virtual reality, augmented reality, big data and IoT.
Blockchain platforms associated with the real estate sector are typically associated with greater security against fraud risks and offers higher speed via the establishment of smart contracts, which do not require the intervention of third parties.
“Paradise Hills is set to become the region’s center for true decentralization and the future of tomorrow’s Internet, essentially setting the standard for real estate developments and homeownership globally,” CEO Shaher Mousli of Paradise Hills Development said about the partnership.