About μNode

μNode / microNode / Node In A Box is a decentralized, distributed platform for personal data storage, permissioning, and retrieval, as well as a self-hosted Ethereum 2.0 client with the ability to extend to a highly-available validation node (dependent on the ISP's availability or access to a mesh network of other nodes).

What is that?

• If you're a regular user, it's just a cool little thing you can hook up to your router and to get the ability to participate in the ever-scaling Ethereum and Solid application ecosystems.
• If you're a hardware nerd, it's a Raspberry Pi 4 with a 1TB SSD.
• If you're a systems nerd, it's an authorization system with a web-based UI that gives access to a go-ethereum client (with a pyrsm-beacon service to enable ETH2.0) and a personal Solid server.
• If you're an applications nerd, it's a programmable platform (you can configure for a dev environment) that you can use to build and test your DAPPs and Solid applications without having to involve any 3rd party services for access to a testnet or Solid pod (decentralized!).
• If you're an investor, it is a machine that can be built relatively inexpensively (~$200 with off-the-shelf parts) that every person connected to the internet will want to own.

Self-Hosted Ethereum Client (for everyone)

• The Ethereum network is more secure with more validators.
• Sending a request to buy/sell/trade cryptocurrency or tokens to a website which passes that request to an Ethereum client the website owners control is not decentralized. That might as well be eBay.
• Any “decentralized” transaction should execute identically on ANY trusted node, but the majority of people who participate in the crypto economy have no idea what that means. In the current implementation of web3, these users simply aren't aware of the risks of false decentralization. With μNode, they don't have to know any more about decentralized tech than any user logging on to their bank's website has to know about SSL.

Decentralized, Distributed Personal Data Platform

Some of the most profitable tech companies in existence have gotten that way by creating, not products, but a sneaky array of traps that lure users in with “free” services, strip them of their private information, and then sell that to advertisers.

Imagine a world where those products were decentralized, hosted on a distributed network, and could be configured NOT to harvest your data at all, OR to harvest it for you, the true owner of that data, to sell to advertisers at your own will. Imagine if those billions of dollars in tech company profits were returned to the people from whom the resources were taken in the first place.