Protos

The personal cloud operating system

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

(WWW creator)

The web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas, ... Today, I believe we’ve reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible — and necessary.

The problems

  1. The rise of "surveillance capitalism" 
  2. The shattered digital self and the walled gardens
  3. The weakness of centralised Internet services in the face for censorship

Internet centralisation has led to several problems that negatively  affect usability and privacy:

1. The rise of "surveillance capitalism"

- The internet is dominated by a handful of large operators that have come to rely on monetising data, a business model in which the user is the product, instead of the customer. 

- This has led to misaligned incentives between the users and the service providers, where data is sold to the highest bidder, with various side effects such as: data leaks, "Cambridge Analytica" style personality targeting, attention hijacking, etc.

2. The shattered digital self and walled gardens

- Digital identities are not owned by people but by companies (Facebook, Google, etc.)

 

- Users have to create a new account for every service or web application they use

 

- Users are locked in walled gardens, where their data and/or social graph resides, with few options to migrate out or switch without losing that data. This leads to a decrease in the velocity of innovation and sub-optimal user experience

3. The weakness of centralised Internet services in the face for censorship

- Centralised Internet services are a honeypot for repressive forces (e.g. China and WeChat, Saudi Arabia and WhatsApp, etc.)

 

- Centralised Internet services get to decide for large swaths of people what constitutes acceptable content or not, and have too much power  vis-a-vis the concept of "de-platforming"

Protos

is a personal cloud operating system that enables people and organisations to self-host Internet applications and own their digital identities

Mission

Decentralise the internet and make computing personal again. Become the Kubernetes of individuals and small organisations.

Self-sovereign identity and self-hosting model

  • users own their digital identity (domain name and cryptographic key)

  • applications are installed on the Protos self-hosting platform from the app store,  similarly to how the iOS or Android app stores work

  • Protos runs on a rented cloud server (AWS, DigitalOcean etc) or on an "always on" computer connected to the Internet

  • application data is always private, unless the user decides to share it with the outside world

  • users can easily migrate their Protos instance together with their data, to any server provider or computer they prefer

Competitive advantages

  • mobile and desktop application which make Protos appealing to non-technical people
  • ability to run existing applications with minor changes
  • censorship resistant cryptographic identity
  • built on the same foundations and technologies that power Kubernetes and Docker, products that have huge developer mindshare
  • once a user is created on the Protos platform, it can use all installed applications without having to create a new user for each application

Development progress

  • alpha version of the Protos platform is done - ongoing effort to reach beta level
  • basic app store is working - identity and monetisation still needs to be implemented
  • cryptographic identity - research has been started but no implementation done yet
  • no work has been done on the desktop and mobile applications

Planned revenue streams

  • app store revenue sharing with developers and other support services sold through the app store
  • licensing fees for organisations of 5 or more users
  • affiliate revenue from cloud providers that get included in the Protos desktop and mobile applications
  • sales of consumer and business targeted hardware that runs Protos (e.g. small computer that individuals or businesses can run at their house or office)

Challenges

  • software ease of use - in order to make Protos into a mass market appeal, it has to be very easy to use, and that is technically challenging, but possible.
  • users have been accustomed to not pay for the online services they use
  • the market for self-hosting platforms is currently small but, with ease of use this has the potential to change completely, in the same way that the iPhone created a new market for pocket computers

Direct competitors

Similar products that are successful and can indicate potential market demand (1)

  •  similar to Protos in that it simplifies application delivery to cloud providers, by using pre-packaged applications
  • different from Protos because it does not put emphasis on self-sovereign identity and data ownership
  • different from Protos because it does not target individuals, but mostly organisations

Similar products that are successful and can indicate potential market demand (2)

  •  similar to Protos in that it simplifies application delivery to cloud providers, by using pre-packaged applications
  • different from Protos because it's a solution for infrastructure at scale. In contrast, Protos is aimed at small organisations that have more modest needs (the long tail of SMEs)
  • different from Protos because it does not offer a solution to the digital identity problem

Similar products that are successful and can indicate potential market demand (3)

  •  similar to Protos in that it helps individuals and organisations take control of their data
  • different from Protos because it is mostly focused on data storage and the ability to run other applications is limited
  • different from Protos because it only offers a partial solution to the digital identity problem (domain name based identity)

End

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