Please bear in mind that there is another project (started after MaidSafe) that decided to use the Safecoin name. I think it’s a scam. It has nothing to do with MaidSafe or the SAFE Network. This is the website for that project (https://safecoin.org/). Once again, it is completely unrelated to MaidSafe.
It would be probably better, if the web site of this project would be much more technical, as there are just too many buzzwords for me to take it seriously. I don't see how it solves a concrete problem.
All infrastructure has good and bad sides, and the bad side is not well documented.
Also, I’d recommend checking out the forum (https://safenetforum.org/) where there are a lot of in-depth technical discussions. The weekly updates and the various discussions on the forum are very transparent on what’s working well along with what are still significant challenges that they are dressing and how. The MaidSafe devs often post RFCs to get community perspective on how to tackle some of the meaty issues. Here’s an example of one such RFC (https://safenetforum.org/t/rfc-data-types-refinement/30508/1...).
Plus, it’s worth visiting the project’s DevHub too (https://hub.safedev.org/)
Also it is doubly frustrating to read about this perception of being "buzzwordy" or "scammy" or to have "people paid" to promote this network... because this team is exactly the opposite to the point of frustration. The actual team is all about doing the grunt work with zero regards towards marketing or promoting it. They didn't even properly capitalized for PR their participation as consultants of HBO's Silicon Valley, if Pied Piper Network sounded very similar to the goals of the SAFE Network it wasn't just coincidence. Mike Judge confirmed it in the Decentralized Web Summit that they especially did research on MaidSafe.
In any case, that image should be changing now, the risk profile has changed substantially. The proof-of-concept was released two years ago, and now there are actual usable alpha you can download right now to test it out.
The main risk in a project as ridiculously ambitious as this one is that they may never release anything. But they had, and they are still developing at neck breaking speed. So if you really understand the scope of this project and you see actual code to play with, you should be orgasmically elated.
If you are not, you don't really understand the implications of a network like this being released. If you don't understand how they are designing the network, you should start by reading this: https://primer.safenetwork.org/ And watch this to understand how Xor Distance and Xor routing works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr9FJRDcNzk&list=PLiYqQVdgdw... And learn about PARSEC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKagaPUrDsY
I hope it helps you understand that this a serious project that isn't using buzzwords just for the sake of marketing, it is truly groundbreaking and in my opinion is the next paradigm shift after the invention of the blockchain. And this is coming from a bitcoin early adopter (2010).
Regards
MaidSafeCoin (MAID) that is currently traded, is just a temporary token that was created in a crowdsale in 2014 to support the project, and is not the Safecoin that is the subject of the whitepapers, code on github etc.
Safecoin will exist when the network launches—it is the token and incentive mechanism for the network, and is secure, fast, and not blockchain based. At the point of launch MAID can be swapped 1-to-1 for Safecoin.
The problem with MaidSafe for me is that they have their own unsafe coin. If I would want to write an application layer, I would build on top of the Lightning network, as it allows cheap, small and fast payments on top of the most secure network in the world (Bitcoin).
I just looked at the whitepaper, and it talks about the price of SafeCoin going up all the time...it hasn't been the case, for a good reason.