The flagship Sentinel dVPN mobile application is returning soon with a completely free version of the application as well as a paid version of the application.

The previous free Sentinel Android dVPN on ETH reached over 500k downloads in 2020- early 2021.

The upcoming hub upgrade includes major revisions to the networking protocol layer allowing for users to get access to multiple paid nodes with just one payment without the requirement of locking tokens with each node. In addition 'digital subscriptions' have the ability to authorize a user's account on Sentinel to utilize bandwidth from a subscription for free allowing for completely decentralized free VPN provision.

This upgrade will enable the fast creation of white-labels and eliminate the issues faced in the past with regards to user-friendly payment structures.

Meet the 3rd dVPN application built on Sentinel.

https://medium.com/sentinel/meet-the-3rd-live-dvpn-integrated-application-built-on-sentinel-4e02b55e56c7

This is application owned by ElQube which is an app studio that also owns RynVPN, a popular centralized VPN with nearly 10 million downloads.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ryn.vpn.privatedns.proxy.fast.mini.web.browser&hl=en&gl=US

This simple android application includes a browser which allows users to connect to dVPN nodes hosted by Sentinel community members for free. In the future this application will monetize from advertisements and use these proceeds to pay dVPN node hosts in the Sentinel ecosystem.

The ‘Fast Private Browser’ dVPN is currently connected to a digital on-chain subscription with the provider address:

sentprov1aaaa4gxkfjntrerurznyhcm4saeegynrhq6zmk

Until the next hub-upgrade, paid-nodes from the public node list are unable to be added to an on-chain subscription so as of now node hosts will have to host nodes with this specific provider address in order to provide bandwidth to users of Fast Private Browser.

Post the hub upgrade, Fast Private Browser will be able to use its revenues from ad monetization within the browser to purchase dVPN token and pay dVPN nodes on the public list to be included into its on-chain subscription which will be continued to be offerred to users for free.

How to Participate and earn dVPN
Community members can host dVPN nodes to support Private Fast Browser’s on-chain digital subscription which is being offerred to its users. Support is required until the launch of the new hub which will allow the creators of Private Fast Browser to add paid nodes from Sentinel’s public dVPN node pool.

Node hosts will be able to earn 42,000 dVPN for maintaining an up-time of over 50% from the 13th of July for a maximum of 30 days until the chain upgrade is complete and the dVPN protocol is fully updated.

Please set provider address as:

sentprov1aaaa4gxkfjntrerurznyhcm4saeegynrhq6zmk

Thanks to the Sentinel dVPN community, the number of nodes hosted is at a 1 year high at over 1100 nodes.

Sentinel nodes are in over 78 cities spanning across 36 countries. With the upcoming upgrade, dVPN node revenue is about to take off

http://map.sentinel.co (PC)

After the upgrade is complete, white-label applications built on dVPN are able to create 'on-chain subscriptions and choose nodes from the public list and pay them for bandwidth. Users are then able to access all of the nodes in the on-chain subscription with a single click

TOR has only ~6000 relay node for millions of daily users while dVPN already has over 1000 exit nodes for 10k+ users.

With on-chain incentivization, dVPN will be able to surpass TOR's network participation with the introduction of its relay network in the future.

Community participation in node hosting has been extremely strong and will only increase with the real node revenue that will begin flowing in with the upcoming bandwidth upgrade.

https://medium.com/sentinel/basedvpn-a-new-free-to-use-decentralized-vpn-built-on-sentinel-f490e6e9e237

BasedVPN is now available on Android and its APK file can be downloaded from the BasedVPN website at:

BasedVPN Website: basedapps.co.uk

Download Link: https://files.basedapps.co.uk/app-release-1-0-0.apk

Users can opt to wait for up to a few more days at maximum for BasedVPN to get accepted onto the Google Play instead of downloading the APK file.

*Connecting to a node may take up to a minute or more. This inconvenience for users will be completely removed with the new protocol upgrade which allows for users to connect instantly to on-chain subscriptions without tokens being locked for every node that is connected to

Checkout this medium post to learn more on:

How does BasedVPN work?
How does BasedVPN make money?
How will BasedVPN have an impact on the dVPN ecosystem?

C is for Control

Governments and ISPs want your online data for control

To track you
To trace you
To record you

If you can be told what you can see or read then it follows that you can be told what to say or think.

Fight back with a Decentralized VPN: https://sentinel.co/downloads

Another week, another 10,000 $dVPN for the best comment. (Comment on Twitter)

New Tweet By @Sentinel_co
Sentinel's Sunday Morality Question:

If intelligence services have root access to your phone, is there any point in using a VPN?

Comment below 🎤👇

The Sentinel blockchain is back online after a scheduled upgrade and is producing blocks.

Please wait while usual functions return to normal for dVPN apps.

https://ping.pub/sentinel/block

Critical Sentinel Update:

Key Milestones Post update

- Subscription management commands (expecting within coming days)
- New Stats API release (expecting this week or next)

New Paradigm for Node Hosts - Introduction of Time Based Subscriptions

Now with the introduction of time based subscriptions, node hosts can now set standardized fixed prices for bandwidth offerings, allowing for node hosts to be able to manage their profit structure in a much stronger manner as compared to arbitrarily pricing bandwidth in terms of each GB consumed.

The introduction of time based subscriptions also makes it easier for white-label organizations to properly forsee and manage their infrastructure costs instead of costs being correlated to bandwidth consumption. It is important to note that centralized VPN applications generally create time-based subscription contracts with datacenters that offer unlimited bandwidth at fixed rates per IP.

EXAMPLE: Node A sets pricing for unlimited bandwidth usage at $7/Month. The dVPN application owner can add Node A to the digital on-chain subscription by locking enough DVPN to cover several months, and users can utilize Node A and any other Node included and pre-paid for in the digital subscription for an unlimited amount of bandwidth as long as the dVPN application owner is covering the costs of Node A.

The introduction of time based subscription will also bring price consolidation to the current node market, however will also require the creation of new service level agreement monitoring practices. A nodes ability to have enough specs in order to handle multiple concurrent sessions while offering a reasonable amount of bandwidth will have to monitored and assured in order for white-label application developers to confidently add a node to their on-chain digital subscription.

Bandwidth usage from the dVPN network on its Cosmos-based hub has hit an all-time-high of over 500 GB of data consumed within a 24 HR period.

The network is on track to cross consumption of 1 TB+ per day with more dVPN applications built on Sentinel launching soon.

Anyone can host a dVPN node and provide bandwidth to users of dVPN applications built on Sentinel.

http://map.sentinel.co

Dedicated stats page arriving soon, new network statistics APIs post-upgrade and new node version launch are in construction now.

With the Sentinel ecosystem off to a renewed start, community feedback is being highly prioritized and changes are being implemented quickly

The majority has represented their desire to see the unbonding period reduce from 28 to 14 days

Vote on Prop 31

https://mintscan.io/sentinel/proposals/31

With the approval of Proposal #31, the number of days required to remove DVPN token from staking with a validator (unbonding time) will reduce from 28 to 14 days.

This decrease in unbonding length follows a recent decrease in the network inflation rate.

https://twitter.com/SentinelVPN/status/1698227654477197644

ATOM VPN, a decentralized VPN application built on Sentinel will soon be released on iOS and Android.

This application allows for users to pay for a monthly subscription with $ATOM tokens through an IBC payment.

The application owner receives $ATOM as a payment for subscription services, while paying the community-based node host in the form of $DVPN tokens.

Users will be able to access all white-listed nodes hosted by the dVPN community (currently 1k+) with a single payment in the form of $ATOM.

With the latest upgrade, user experience is about to be revolutionized with instant session initialization speeds and 1-click connection and disconnection as opposed to the previously cumbersome process of locking tokens with individual nodes before establishing a connection.

Monthly dVPN subscription service will likely start at .5 ATOM.

Introducing Sentinel's Biggest dVPN protocol upgrade yet:

This protocol upgrade brings two critical changes:

1) Introduction of ‘Time Based Payments ’

2) Introduction of on-chain ‘Subscription Plans’

With this protocol upgrade, community hosted dVPN nodes are able to price their bandwidth services at a monthly rate (or any custom time period) for an unmetered amount of bandwidth usage (unlimited). dVPN applications can aggregate these nodes and upsell their services, essentially locking tokens with nodes and paying them in-order to add them to a ‘subscription plan’, while pricing unlimited access to a ‘subscription plan’ at a flat monthly rate for the end-user.

Instead of merely facilitating p2p transaction, dVPN applications built on Sentinel can now do exactly what centralized VPN applications do which is to pre-pay for bandwidth and then upsell the bandwidth to the user.

*Get Your dVPN Node Added to a Subscription Plan Today!*

To get your dVPN node added into a subscription plan and to get paid at a fixed cost monthly, first you will need to update your node’s hourly pricing configuration.

The first subscription plan launched on the network will be a plan that adds nodes which have a monthly rate of $5/hr.

Initially, multiple applications will share the same subscription plan and share the corresponding costs to pay nodes however as the total bandwidth consumption of the network increases, each application will begin to construct its own subscription plan based on demand.

Instructions:

In the node config file, the hourly price should be set to: 13000000udvpn

At this rate (with current market prices), a dVPN Node would earn roughly $5 per month in the form of $DVPN tokens.

*In future bandwidth protocol upgrade, the DVPN/USD rate will be relcalculated regularly with an oracle

https://medium.com/sentinel/introduction-of-on-chain-subscriptions-and-time-based-payments-sentinels-biggest-dvpn-protocol-a2b240199f18

First Subscription Plan on the Sentinel dVPN Network. Get your dVPN Node Added today! 📡

White-label applications such as Solar VPN, Meile dVPN, Based VPN and others will be using the new on-chain 'subscription plan' and will select nodes from the public list that will be added into the subscription.

Nodes will receive $5 per month in dVPN which will be paid out every hour. In the future dVPN/USD price calculation will be readjusted every 1 hour using an on-chain oracle.

The node incentive program will still continue however the goal is for subscription plan earnings to be sufficient enough for dVPN nodes so that the program can be removed within the coming months as Sentinel becomes a revenue generating ecosystem.

Set your HOURLY pricing config in the config file in your dVPN node's folder to: 13000000udvpn hourly

1) What does getting added into a 'subscription plan' mean?

Nodes that are added into a time-based subscription plan will be paid based on monthly flat rates. The creator of the subscription plan (dVPN app owner) will lock tokens with each node 'added' into the plan. Payment from these tokens is deducted every 1 hour of successful up-time)

2) Why is this subscription plan paying dVPN nodes $5 per month?

Right now this subscription plan is more of a test or a proof of concept in the ecosystem to create the first working economic structure where nodes are easily aggregated and paid by an application owner. It is expected that we will see various tiers of nodes e.g $5 node bracket, $7 residential node bracket. In the coming months the ecosystem should work towards establishing the criteria for nodes to be priced at certain levels to make it easier for applications to find the nodes they require for their specific service offerings.

This subscription plan will be shared by multiple white-label applications and after sufficient optimization and testing, white-label applications will begin to create their own individual subscription plans overtime as their bandwidth usage increases exponentially from here on out.

Questions to be answered in the future with the support of the community:

1) Can 1 node be added to multiple subscription plans?

2) Can 1 subscription plan be shared by multiple white-label applications?

3) What could be some various pricing tiers of monthly subscription plans and what is the eligibility criteria for these tiers?