https://x.com/EFF/status/1955314102093652317

Since Sentinel and Mysterium were established as the first VPN protocols in 2017, people have asked why does anyone needs an open-source, provably encrypted VPN.

The same question was once asked about messaging apps. Years later, centralized closed-source messengers like WhatsApp were exposed for privacy issues.

The VPN market is heading for the same disruption. The Facebook–Onavo scandal, where user data from a VPN was exploited, made it clear that centralized and closed-source VPNs carry real risks.

Sentinel is leading the shift with over 7 applications built on its protocol, nearly 1 million users, and thousands of community-hosted servers. The goal is simple: the infrastructure for a provably secure VPN that anyone can trust.

Sentinel provides two resources every VPN app needs: bandwidth and compute.

- Bandwidth comes from independent, community-run dVPN nodes around the world. Anyone can host a node on a cloud server or residential IP.

- Compute is handled by Sentinel’s own blockchain, secured by 70 validators. This manages authentication, payments, and connection authorization entirely on-chain.

Node discovery is also on-chain. Nodes publish their status to the blockchain and apps read this to find available nodes. Sentinel protocol developers never interact with end users.

Traditional privacy-focused VPNs such as Mullvad operate on a centralized infrastructure model. The VPN provider owns or leases the physical and virtual servers that users connect to, often hosted in commercial data centers. These servers are under the provider’s administrative control, meaning that hardware, IP addresses, and network configurations are all managed from a central point.

Node discovery in this model is handled through a proprietary backend. When a user opens the VPN client, the application queries the provider’s central server to retrieve a list of available VPN nodes, including their locations, capacity, and current load. This data is not published in a public or verifiable ledger, it exists entirely within the provider’s internal systems.

User authentication is also centralized. Even when a VPN uses accountless login methods (like Mullvad’s token-based system), the process still involves the client sending authentication requests to the provider’s backend servers. The central system validates the user’s credentials or token, issues a session authorization, and tells the target VPN server to allow the connection.

This design introduces single points of failure and trust requirements:

- The provider has full administrative control over the infrastructure.

- The user must trust that the central server list is accurate and that authentication systems are not logging connection data.

- External pressure (e.g., legal orders, corporate policy changes) can directly impact server availability or user privacy.

Unlike Sentinel’s on-chain node registry and decentralized authorization, this architecture keeps critical coordination and access control in closed, provider-operated systems - limiting transparency, verifiability, and censorship resistance.

User authentication is also done through their backend. Even token-based systems still rely on centralized servers to approve connections. This creates single points of failure and trust requirements.

On Sentinel, node discovery and authorization are on-chain. Nodes publish IP, port, supported protocols, optional geolocation, and uptime directly to the blockchain. Anyone can query this through an RPC.

Connection authorization happens after an on-chain payment or an external trigger like Apple Pay, Google Pay, or credit card. The node then checks the blockchain to confirm access, with no central server involved.

A user can connect to a Sentinel node with only an RPC. Even a command-line tool can open a secure tunnel without touching any off-chain database or API.

The time for Sentinel is now. Soon the question will not be why VPNs need to be decentralized. It will be why anyone still uses a centralized VPN

Two of the top 10 assets in crypto announced major alignment with Cosmos in the past few weeks.

Everyone is talking about how Cosmos was always right, but didn't make money?

Sir, ATOM is top 50 despite everyone's fud and the real utility coin bull hasn't even begun. Watch

The awareness on the hidden dangers of centralized VPN applications is growing on a daily basis.

The trend for open-source decentralized VPNs is almost here, and the only existing open-source protocol for any developer to build their own is on Sentinel.

https://x.com/AlternativeTo/status/1958971464259965091

Sentinel Public Testnet Now Live – Run the New dVPN Node Today

Sentinel has launched a public testnet to support its upcoming network upgrade — introducing major enhancements to the decentralized VPN and bandwidth-sharing protocol. The official announcement of the testnet will happen after the activation of automated USD pricing.

Key upgrades include:

- On-chain Node Leasing: Nodes can be leased by providers on an hourly basis, with payments managed transparently via smart contracts.

- USD-Based Pricing (Coming Soon): Nodes will be able to set prices in USD, with real-time conversion handled via Osmosis through the Oracle module. This feature will become active once a relayer is established between the testnet and Osmosis.

- Instant Session Start: Users can connect to nodes in a single transaction, without needing to pre-subscribe.

- Multiple Sessions per Node: Users can maintain multiple active sessions with the same node, improving flexibility and performance.

In addition, the testnet will soon be updated with the new node healthcheck logic, further enhancing reliability and uptime monitoring for dVPN infrastructure.

This is an open invitation to all dVPN node operators to participate in testing and help prepare the network for mainnet release.

Node Software
https://github.com/sentinel-official/sentinel-dvpnx

Setup Guide
https://hackmd.io/@6J34O6g0TRyesXAGmtA5_w/BJOFj5t-le

Testnet RPC
rpc.bluenet.sentinel.co

- Support from Busurnode

🚀 Busurnode is now running Sentinel’s bluenet-2-2 Testnet! 🎉

We’re excited to announce that Busurnode is now fully supporting the Sentinel bluenet-2-2 testnet with public endpoints and services available for the community.

🔗 Public Endpoints:
RPC: https://rpc-sentinel-testnet.busurnode.com:443
API: https://api-sentinel-testnet.busurnode.com:443

🔎 Explorer:
https://explorer.busurnode.com/sentinel-testnet

🛠 Other Services:
👉 https://busurnode.com/network/testnet/sentinel

We remain committed to providing reliable infrastructure for the Sentinel ecosystem and helping the community test, build, and innovate on the decentralized VPN network.

Sentinel Testnet Faucet Enabled
https://busurnode.com/network/testnet/sentinel/faucet

Thanks to Busurnode!

Did you know that you can retrieve data from Sentinel's network of community-hosted Android data miners through the Sentinel Scout agent on Fetch?

Sentinel Scout will begin its developer onboarding journey from the first week of September with an initial focus on developers in the Fetch ecosystem.

Try out the Sentinel Scout Agent on Fetch:
https://agentverse.ai/agents/details/agent1q0k2h38qxfzthn200f24ddlnjd86f6kdgd8rcgtwnzgmvpttrfrq6d7gnhw/profile

Scout provides developers with decentralized scraping infrastructure:

• Query any URL w/ geo-targeting
• JSON / CSV / TXT outputs
• Open APIs + MCP server

Provable web data → for autonomous AI agents.

Get 100 MB of free scraping credit everyday!

http://Scout.sentinel.co

The Sentinel ecosystem is only a few thousand users away from a monumental milestone.

The first million users was all about getting the dVPN protocol and back-end right.

The next millions of users will be all about revenue and economic scaling.

1 MILL dVPN users ATH, BLU FRENS ARE COMING FOR YOU

Over 1 million unique users have connected to one or more of 7 dVPN applications built on Sentinel!

Sentinel's dVPN protocol is now successfully tested for scale and is ready to onboard the next 10 million users at a rapid pace.

More dVPN apps launching on Sentinel this year!

Users can securely interact with Akash Chat through Sentinel Scout to intelligently identify the most relevant links pertaining to the topic that they want to scrape data on.

Akash Chat does cannot store user data and provides confidential and private intelligence.

Try out the Akash Chat integration on Sentinel Scout today. Receive up to 100 MB of free data scraping credits everyday.

Connect your agent to the API interface and give it the ability to scrape and train itself autonomously.

http://Scout.sentinel.co

A new era for Cosmos $ATOM begins as the network is becoming increasingly recognized as having one of the leading interoperability infrastructures.

The Cosmos IBC protocol allows users to bridge the $P2P token to Ethereum and will soon allow P2P tokens to be bridged to Solana. More updates on Sentinel's Uniswap pool is coming soon.

The Cosmos IBC protocol is being integrated with top 10 chains such as Cardano and XRP, and is arguably the most secure interoperability protocol as transaction confirmation is secured by the distributed Cosmos validator set.

Sentinel has been warning you about centralized VPNs for the past 7 years, and now the whole world is echoing the same sentiment.

The VPN industry is a centralized oligopoly where a few players own many closed-source apps that have the ability to decrypt your communications.

The decentralized VPN revolution is truly beginning.

A new investigation by researchers from Arizona State University and Citizen Lab has revealed that three families of Android VPN apps, with more than 700 million downloads on Google Play, are secretly linked.

https://helpnetsecurity.com/2025/08/19/android-vpn-apps-used-by-millions-are-covertly-connected-and-insecure/

Despite being marketed as different providers, they share the same code, infrastructure, and even the same hard-coded passwords that could allow attackers to decrypt user traffic.

The study found that these apps collect location data without disclosure, use weak encryption, and are ultimately tied back to Qihoo 360, a Chinese company with connections to the PLA.

This confirms what many suspected - the consumer VPN market is opaque, deceptive, and dangerous for users who believe they are choosing freely between providers.

The Sentinel $P2P ecosystem is now clearly defined as 'Not a Security' under the US government.

Sentinel is a DePin network that allows anyone to provide bandwidth to dVPN privacy apps from their residential/cloud server, or provide bandwidth for data scraping from their phone

The amount of bandwidth consumption from users using dVPN apps built on Sentinel is about to reach a new all-time-high of over 70 TB consumed in 1 week.

Thats an average of 10 TB/Day. Did you know that the Helium network processes around 50 TB/Day?

Sentinel is at 20% already

Chatgpt is unable to scrape a given URL?

No fear, Sentinel Scout is here.

Sentinel Scout is the first decentralized AI Data layer where anyone can scrape data from Sentinel's network of community-hosted mobile data miners.

The internet is what connects 8 billion humans together forming the fabric of the intertwined human consciousness in the 21st century.

Disruption to the flow of this consciousness, and hell can break lose, as seen in Nepal.

Sentinel is at the forefront of the revolution

Sentinel has the only decentralized and open-source protocol where anyone can build their own decentralized VPN.

Sentinel has the only architecture for the public to host the servers instead of the application owners.

Sentinel has the only architecture for a completely decentralized on-chain DHT where users can identify service providers by accessing the Sentinel blockchain without having to depend on centralized infrastructure.

In short, Sentinel has the only stack where people can build trusted VPN applications today.

The time has come, the revolution is here.

Sentinel Scout GitBook – Early Draft Release

Leading up to the official launch of Sentinel Scout with its AI partner which is a top 100 project, the Sentinel Scout documentation is being finalized.

This draft is an outline of the documentation and is intended to provide the community with an initial view of the platform’s direction. It includes details on the architecture, API interface, Android data miner, and the foundations of Scout’s decentralized scraping system.

Please note:

This is not the final version. Sections will be expanded and refined in future updates.

Some areas are placeholders for upcoming features, such as storage integrations and ZK proofing.

This GitBook marks the beginning of a structured knowledge base to support developers and AI agents building on Sentinel Scout.

Dedicated Sections for integrating Scout with various agent building tools such as N8N will be introduced.

Access the early draft here:
https://sentinel-11.gitbook.io/sentinel-scout-ai-data-layer

Sentinel’s custom on-chain subscription contract modules have now powered over 1 million unique user subscriptions, proving that Sentinels infrastructure for creating a white-labelled dVPN application can work at scale.

There are two main ways a user connects to a dVPN node on Sentinel:

1) Direct Peer-to-Peer Payment:
The user subscribes to a node and pays the operator in $P2P. This is a direct interaction where payments flow from user to node with the chain enforcing session rules.

2) On-Chain Subscription Contract
The user makes a payment into the subscription contract and is then authorized to connect to a pool of dVPN nodes that an app developer or contract owner has consolidated and pre-paid.

The subscription contract reflects real-world VPN economics. In traditional VPNs, companies rent or purchase cloud servers, bundle them together, and resell them to end users.

On Sentinel, dVPN app creators lock $P2P with nodes, add them into the contract, and give end users one-click access across the consolidated pool.

Access can be triggered by more than on-chain $P2P payments. Off-chain signals, such as API calls, credit card payments, or free trial authorizations, can also be used. This gives dVPN apps on Sentinel the ability to offer seamless onboarding similar to centralized VPNs, while still being fully decentralized and verifiable at the settlement layer.

This system has already scaled to over one million unique users. It proves that Sentinel’s modules are not only resilient but also capable of replicating and improving on centralized VPN models.

Thanks to @freQniKs for deriving these stats from the Sentinel P2P chain and making them publicly available

Sentinel's 5 figure weekly active user count is about to be a thing of the past with the new centralized VPN that is launching on Sentinel's P2P Layer 1 chain.

Sentinel is already doing 20% of the daily bandwidth consumption of the Helium network. Now stats are about to rocket

🚀 DVPN App 2.0.0 for macOS is now live!

Our latest update is available for download on the Apple App Store. Here's what's new:

— Advanced Obfuscation: In highly censored regions like the Middle East and China, where online freedoms are most oppressed, regular VPN connections can be blocked by your ISP's Deep Packet Inspection filters. This feature evades behavioral-matching algorithms, making your VPN traffic much harder to detect.

— Alternative Routing: To connect, the app fetches server lists from the blockchain—but what if those endpoints are restricted? This cutting-edge solution reroutes blockchain communications via public DNS servers, blending them seamlessly with everyday online activity.

— Node Selection: Choose a specific dVPN node to connect to, rather than just selecting a city as before.

The app now embraces macOS's latest design trends with stunning Liquid Glass UI elements.

Give it a spin—download now!