The Things Network is an open, decentralized and crowd sourced Internet of Things data network.
People connecting their networks and allowing traffic from, to and over their network free passage created the Internet. In doing so they created synergy, whereby the whole could grow past the sum of its parts.
The Things Network will attempt to do the same for the IoT network of the future.
Internet of Things demands a long range, low battery and low cost solution for delivering sensor data and pushing control data between the cloud and the devices.
Following the law of Moore, computer equipment costs are decreasing over time exponentially. The new generation of network devices have reached the price point that allow us to crowd source the network.
Current technologies have made it possible to build a community owned, low cost data network. A country like for example The Netherlands can reach complete coverage with less than 80 gateways. A city like Amsterdam only needs 5 gateways for coverage, which is very attainable with each gateway costing the same as the average price of a laptop.
Examples for the usage of the network can range from low cost position trackers in a shipping container, too a small bracelet for your cat so you will always be able to find it.
Everybody should be able to put sensor data on the ether and fetch the data online. No monopolies or limited player markets should be allowed here.
Our mission is to build a decentralized, technology independent IoT network, owned and operated by its users.
We are building a distributed network that supports all IoT connectivity. A network that is democratic from the start. We want to ensure that no single entity can dominate the IoT. Therefore we are building a net neutral, distributed installed base of gateways, which are connected through a distributed data network.
We are the network.
We are building the network with the following principles:
- Your data is your data - data is encrypted end to end.
- Net neutrality - all data is treated equally.
- Open source - technology developed in the stack is made open source.
We are crowd sourcing the network. From the network equipment and the installation points, too the decentralized data store.
The Things Network has kicked off in Amsterdam. We already gathered a group of contributors that will create a network completely covering the city. Several partners are building their startups on top of this network. We aspire to create a way, a blue print for implementing, that can serve as an example for the rest of the world.
The goal of the community is to build a world wide open decentralized internet of things internet.
Decentralization is at the core of everything. It is embedded in the architecture and every design decision, this to prevent in every way that a single entity can be in control of the network.