https://autonomi.com/publications/autonomi-2026-built-for-this-moment

Twenty years ago, a Scottish engineer named David Irvine started building something most people thought was either impossible or unnecessary. A network with no owners. No servers. No middlemen. A place where people could store, share, and collaborate - permanently, privately, and entirely on their own terms.

The world has spent two decades proving him right about the problem.

Centralised platforms harvest your data and sell it. Cloud providers hold your files hostage to subscription fees and renewal terms. Corporate infrastructures create single points of failure, surveillance, and control. The internet we were promised: open, resilient, owned by no one - became the internet we got: fragmented into walled gardens, surveilled at scale, and increasingly fragile.

Autonomi (formerly known as The SAFE Network) was designed as the answer. The Network was built by MaidSafe, the company David founded, but MaidSafe does not own it. Nobody does. That's the point. The Autonomi Network belongs to the people who run it and the people who use it.

Autonomi 1.0 is live. Data can be encrypted, stored and retrieved from The Network today. What comes next is the version of Autonomi that the mission always required…