I don’t get the invite model. Ask someone already invited to send you an invite? I guess it prevents spam reservations but I don’t have Facebook or twitter, so I guess I’m out of luck.
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I was also curious, and found https://volkfi.com/whyinvite which has a constructive sounding heading
> Why is Volk Fi invite-only
followed by blather blather about the technology and then finally some invite-sounding text of
> But, because Volk Fi is crowdsourced, it needs a certain user density in order to have full coverage and reliability
which seems to run directly in contradiction to why one would want the system to be invite-only. Can you imagine starting a BitTorrent service, and then trying to ensure the swarm stayed small by only telling your roommates? I guess that's why I'm not in marketing.
Speaking of Bittorrent... This is a YC '19 company and...
https://igamerss.com/index.php/2019/03/19/here-are-the-85-st....
"Volk Wi-fi: Volk is making an Android smartphone with a free information plan, no service required. The co-founders say they’re utilizing long-range wi-fi to share connections and construct a community of telephones. Co-Founder Greg Hazel was the Chief Architect at Bittorrent, whereas co-founder Straya Markovic was the lead engineer at mesh messaging platform Firechat."
So yeah, they should know better.
Proximity is important. They want people to invite their friends, who are more likely to live near each other than a random person on the internet. They need density, not just users.
Makes complete sense to me. The assumption probably is that people you invite are usually close to you.
I'm guessing so they don't get people signing up where there are no other users anywhere nearby, and then posting bad reviews when their device never connects to any other devices.
Here you go, plenty of invite codes on their subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VolkFi/comments/b1dyqy/lets_just_ge...
Thank you!