I thought users should have Safecoins to be able to buy domains and do stuff on the Launcher , how come there is already domains and available "Safe" websites while Safecoins aren't available on the Platform yet ? (I know It's possible to buy them from exchanges for the moment)
It's out in the open so to speak. People can test, developers can try out apps and people can build websites and register domains. The network will be wiped though, as it's in Alpha (not Beta). So in a few months people can farm test-Safecoin and Maidsafe can try several algo's to see what fits best. If they've optimized it and people are running Vaults from home again (as we did in several tests) they will announce the launch of the real network. At that moment the network is started and can't be stopped again. So what they're doing is testing, testing and more testing. They also allow external devs to build applications that work with their API's. So everything is getting optimized for the great moment where this thing goes live. That might take some time, but as users we're getting more apps and cool stuff to try out. People are building forums and social media websites for this thing at the moment.
So it looks like another form of tor browser? Can't visit normal sites, only open special sites with safe://websites, similar to tor's onion dark net. It will be widely used by dark net merchants, i guess.
Yes, it's a bit like TOR's darkweb. But SAFE wants to do more. They already allow you to register a domain in their DNS (Decentralized Name System). Very user friendly. They've also built a mail application which you can use on the TEST 9 Network. They also want to fix everything related to storage, so think of BitTorrent but fully encrypted (this actually works, test it on Alpha network). They also want you to store private data like on Dropbox, but also fully encrypted. Safecoin is one of the killer ideas. It's fully anonymous, extremely fast and scales to thousands of transactions a second.
So, think of it like Java that starts on your computer in the background. In this case it's the SAFE Launcher. You log in and give your credentials only once. On the network you are free to download files, browse websites, tip a writer of a nice article some Safecoin, browse a videosite and it's all P2P. You might understand why they're working for 10 years in this stuff now
. But the good new is, we're getting close. They have the DNS working, SAFE Mail, private and public storage, SAFE Websites, routing, their own browser. Exciting times.