Have been a crypto currency and block chain believer for a long time. Only recently I saw few companies offering services to host your own nodes for VPN services. I don’t know if something like this has already been posted here but there are few crypto projects that are already up and running where you can already host your own nodes. There are a few players in the decentralized VPN space but Sentinel coin is making some moves… They have already started testing nodes(open to public). Then there is Mysterium, who have not opened it to the public yet but looks promising as they have started some testing(no updates yet). Privatix, who have VPN services already present but first time doing it on blockchain technology. I just want to get a conversation going regarding this topic and learn something new from this amazing community I randomly stumbled on the internet.
Look forward for all your comments.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I want to respectfully ask an honest question - why would I want to be a VPN node and have others sending their traffic through me? Isn’t that just making me liable for others’ traffic? Or am I misunderstanding how it works?
Have been a crypto currency and block chain believer for a long time.
If a technology requires you to have sold yourself on a belief system for it to work, it probably isn’t viable.
There’s no need for DVPN technologies to use a blockchain. Blockchain isn’t a requirement for a DVPN. In fact, it’s completely reasonable for DVPNs to take payment in Bitcoin or monero, or even fiat, or not at all. For every Blockchain DVPN type technology I’ve looked at, the token economics don’t stack up. Inevitably these things are nothing more than ERC20 tokens used to fund the development rather than operation of the network, which leads to some perverse incentives for subscribers.
The problem with DVPNs is that there are more providers than consumers, so there’s scope for a supply glut which depresses prices. This type of problem has already happened with storage blockchain services e.g. STORJ and SIA.
Then you have DVPN-type technologies like Substratum where not only are there no published token economics details whatsoever, there’s no understanding of what costs will be (therefore it becomes impossible to accurately value the token).
In all cases any DVPN is competing (for want of a better word) with Tor, which is free and conventional VPNs, which are quicker. Any intermediary multi-hop routing protocol is going to have latency issues, Tor have done tons of research into this and it’s a fundamental part of the anonymity/speed tradeoff. The only way DVPNs can compete with conventional VPNs is on cost, which is aided by the supply glut, but ultimately pitches them squarely against Tor. As Tor is free, the one advantage a DVPN has over the competition (cheapness, not speed) is lost.
I’m not saying these things can’t exist, nor that they can’t somehow make some amount of money, but mass adoption to the point of displacing Tor or centralised VPNs just isn’t going to happen.
there are few crypto projects that are already up and running where you can already host your own nodes.
This is starting to sound a lot like you are trying to refer me to your time share in the alps…
The people behind this #$%# are brilliant. They have figured out how to take young technically savvy people and extract money from them like old confused grandmothers.
The whole idea of blockchain is a hashed database, while a vpn is for the purpose of no logging and minimal footprint back to you. Using blockchain, means that you are keeping that footprint and logging in a database that locks it in forever, worse than the 30 day retention that VPNs are required to do by their government.
It does not make it cheaper as well, as the bandwidth monitoring and tracking means you are paying per use rather than vpn services that charge you as a subscription because bandwidth is cheap. Privatix is using Ethereum backend, which is not anonymous in transactions, and can eventually track down the payee and payer info.
“Moreover, the whole Internet is slowing down as its content is getting heavier while the delivery price remains high”
VPN does not solve this problem, you are effectively increasing your content by making it heavier with encryption, which has to make it larger to hide what it is, thus you are increasing the delivery price you pay to your ISP by the heavier content and again paying for that same content to go through a vpn.
Ideally you do not want a private VPN node if you are hiding your traffic, as the benefit of a crowded vpn means your traffic is mixed with thousands of others. If only one person uses that ip, you can track that ip and link accounts across sites that use that.
correct me if i am mistaken but its still all a very new concept. all nodes will be linked together and forming blocks of nodes. itll make it anonymous(still tricky, i agree). in the long run if more people start hosting the node when it is incentivized. the dream is for everyone on this planet to be on vpn if it is accesible $$$ to everyone and ensure 100% anonymity for everyone.
You can be a VPN node and still not expose your IP if you run your requests through TOR/OpenVPN or any centralized/decentralized VPNs. The same is the case when you rent out storage/content.
As far as Sentinel is concerned, they will have filters to block websites that you do not want to take requests for. A community voting feature will determine the category of an IP or a website.
The node does take liability in a decentralized network and the cost of his bandwidth is directly proportional to the risk that he takes.
Explains a lot about the US fiat currency - thanks for making that clear! Now, who do I trust more, an unaccountable government raping me financially, or a system that is coming whether you like it or not?? Read an article recently, saying the US government just went live with a trial test of a digital currency, using authorized parties to participate in the currency test! Seems to me a “belief” system is all we have! Just wait for the day when you no longer handle your own currency, as it will be non physical digital credits and debits! The day won’t come fast enough for your government paymaster!
Encrypting content ain’t the same as making it heavy. Of course, but with the current state of things, that is something that’s necessary. Multiple times it has been noted that, we are not just being exposed to ‘Ads’ that make us buy what we ‘want’, but there’s a major influence in everyday decisions.
Ethereum backend doesn’t make it anonymous. True. That doesn’t mean it can’t be anonymous at all. For starters, not storing any browsing data is primary. You don’t necessarily have to store a hash of all that.
Instead, just the transaction data that’s required to run the network is can be up on the blockchain and later, blocks can just be discarded/compressed too if they aren’t needed. Since transaction data is separated out from the identity data, there’s no relation to anything that can identify the individual or increase liability on the exit node.
Btw, even if the traffic is part of the crowd, and exits from a VPN service provider, the IP can be known/logged/detected beforehand. Owing to this, a decentralized network is much safer considering the fact that. with the right configuration the entry and exit nodes never will know each other.
All the blockchain vpns are saying “Hey, do you know Tor? We are gonna take that and charge you for it”
Tor does something similar and the hosts are getting harrassed by police because their IP addresses are getting linked to Child Pornography.
The scary part is someone could theoretically be held criminally liable.
Is the idea that you’re taking multiple hops through multiple nodes to obscure where you are actually coming from? If everyone on the planet is on “VPN”, then we may as just call it the “Internet” - inter-connected networks, that’s all it really is. At some point you need to exit the “VPN” to get to your destination, unless your destination is also on the “VPN” in which case, again, it’s just like the Internet. It’s just independent computer networks who choose to link up with each other in order to pass traffic between them. That’s allllll the internet is. So what makes this Virtual “Private” Network different from a regular network?
I guess without more information on how it works, it’s just a concept without a benefit as far as I can see. Traffic still needs to leave the VPN somewhere.
Decentralized VPNs can be of 2 types (more maybe, but these are the most common) - Tunnelling and Relaying
Sentinel works in a way, where:
→ the entry node (source) sends data to OpenVPN
→ which then sends the same data to the exit node
→ which uses either TOR/i2p/any VPN to protect itself
→ and route data to the destination
→ this is then routed back to the entry node via TOR/i2p/OpenVPN (depending on the User’s choice and availability of resources.
Every node can set a price for itself depending on the offering. This has to be done in a market place. So, if you are a node, you gotta be competitive. Also, it is important to understand that each node may differ in their offering due to the various security protocol implementations that they might choose to implement for their node(s).
As mentioned earlier, as far as Sentinel is concerned, a known website directory will be voted on by the community and this in turn will act as a self-governing website white-listing for the service. It is recommended to host nodes on a VPS until full governance to these services is in place. This will protect Users to a great extent. Imagine, buying VPS nodes with BTC and hosting decentralized VPN or any resource nodes there.
No matter what, in the end, due to the anonymity of registration and other stuff around it, all users with their anonymous User IDs will be able to access everything using these Services.
It sounds like tor but with extra steps.
Yes all forms of capitalism and monetary systems fall apart once belief in the system falls apart. What makes crypto dumber still is the fact that not only must you believe in the monetary aspect, but it also seems to require belief in the technical solution as well. Cryptocurrencies underpin their technical implementation with game theory - this is flawed because the technology depends on all actors being rational, when obviously not all actors are.
Edit: funny that you reply to a five-year-old post about the troubles of fiat while a bunch of crypto giants are collapsing because they padded their books with their own tokens created out of thin air, which itself is a fiat currency, just privatized
That would be a simple way out, but fortunately for us as the blockchain space continues to evolve, things which previously existed become antiquated. #tor
I’m starting to get comfortable with the idea of the dVPN. The more time I spend on understanding the code that the rockstars at Sentinel Group, are adopting to securely create this system, the more excited I’m getting.
These guys are creating a full dVPN suite for internet privacy!
It’s not about the multiple hops. It’s the route and it’s about the packet flow. You can secure your route and still get away without any hops. But, a combo of these will serve the purpose really well. Secure Routing + Relay. That’s what it’s called in Sentinel.
The commercial VPNs like Nord for example, have these too. They have VPN+VPN and VPN+TOR too.
This can be an interesting way to host a node too. Host a node on a VPS that routes traffic through TOR. And this in turn will protect you as an exit node and the end user also feels secure connecting to you as a node. Just my 2 sat here.
I think the idea is plausible deniability if you are acting as a node you have a solid argument against any traffic originating from your connection it’s definitely not the best but if everyone or enough people are using something like that it would be nearly impossible to get solid evidence against them.