#006 - Progress Update December

January 4, 2021 • Written by David

Completed

A list of work packages we've fully wrapped up this month. Expand any to find out more about its conclusion.

As 2020 comes to an end, wrap up the year, plan ahead for what is to come in 2021 and most importantly, let everyone recharge their batteries.

Here's to 2021

Despite all the circumstances we will continue to work hard and push forward: for Privacy, for Freedom. Thanks for being part of that journey. May fate treat us all kindly.

A lot Was Achieved in 2020

Even with all the torments of 2020, for Safing, the year had a lot of highlights:

  • a successful Kickstarter campaign launched
  • two people joined the team
  • the Portmaster saw the light of day
  • the payment system went live
  • the SPN got into pre-alpha
  • the Portmaster recently received a complete UI overhaul
  • follow-up funding was received for another full year
  • and most importantly: so many of you got to know us and are joining our forces
The Team is Recharging Their Batteries

With all that behind us, and mountains to climb ahead of us - it was only natural for us to take some time off and regain our strength. This was a big focus of December, along with tidying up some things that have been lying around for too long. Like a spring cleaning in December.

In Progress

Expand any work package to find out more about its progress, obstacles and sub-achievements.

After v0.1, focus on stabilizing the typical issues that arise with early software. Fix bugs, improve performance & stability.

Detect failures in the network and react accordingly.

Deliver to more and more pre-orders as the network matures.

Stabilizing Connection Stability

The SPN is deeply integrated into the Portmaster. If the Portmaster has slow connection processing, it directly affects the SPN. So fine-tuning this was Daniel's focus on in December. Anyone using the Portmaster will have noticed these improvements.

You can see our high level concepts & you can inspect our code. But nothing in between.

Fill that gap by providing proper documentation of the Portmaster. What does each component do? With what other components does it interact? Where is its code located?

We Adapted Structures to Enable Progress

Deep technical knowledge, that can only come from Patrick or Daniel, has been the bottleneck for this project. And with all the recent focus on Portmaster development it was hard to sit together and talk about documentation - there was just always something more important. The solution to this was to adapt our overall structures. Starting in January, certain time slots are booked solely for 'content creation', such as documentation.

Enable you to pay for the SPN with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero

Review Round II in Progress

As this feature is adding a lot of code onto our payment system codebase, some bigger restructures were already implemented. Currently we are taking a look at all of the details and looking how we can improve the smaller things.

Spice up the podcast with proper structure. Create an introduction and outro with underlined music and improve the overall storytelling.

Music Licence Got Purchased

We are happy to have wrapped up the licencing part for this. Now, we have an amazing artists whose music we can use in our podcast. Looking forward to the results. Publishing the first episode of the new season in January. Stay tuned!

Explore Our Podcast

New people visiting our website still have a hard time figuring out what we do at a glance. Instead of explaining everything at once, simplify our entry-level communication and move more complex stuff into according sub pages.

Concept Being Defined

This is rather unexpected, but nevertheless very important. We realised people do not understand what we do when visiting our website for the first time. A lot of thought is being put into how we can improve this. Though we have some concepts ready, it is not too fleshed out yet - it is best to just wait and see ;)

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