Community Development Update 20th September 2023.

New Stats Feature: We've finished creating new statistical tools. They are currently being added to our database and will be open for public use soon.

App Improvements: We've made significant enhancements to our apps. As a result, they connect better and work more efficiently. Updated versions of our BasedVPN and other Android apps coming soon will offer better performance and user experience.

New App Launches: We're releasing two more free VPN apps called Bagmisiz dVPN and Caishen dVPN. These focus on Turkish and Chinese speakers.

Download Milestone: BasedVPN has been downloaded over 10,000 times. We hope to see a combined total of 100,000 downloads for all three apps in the coming months.

“Why does Sentinel dVPN need multiple VPN apps?” - a question often asked on our community Telegram.

The VPN industry is an oligopoly, meaning a few entities own and control many of the apps you see and hear from. So it’s no surprise they are also closed source.

Sentinel isn’t just one stand-alone VPN app; it is an open-source, decentralized infrastructure for VPN applications. Anyone can take the code, see and verify it’s legit without false “100% no logs” promises, then build their own VPN.

Sentinel believes the more decentralized VPNs there are, the better it is for personal sovereignty online. The more geographic-specific VPNs, the better, the more culturally focused VPNs, the better.

Download one and try it out; a lot more are coming:

http://Sentinel.co/downloads

Weekly DVPN node 'tax' (revenue) generated has now gone into the 3 digit USD value and is increasing rapidly with the new subscription payments structure.

20% of all payments made to nodes from users or application owners is distributed to stakers.

https://dvpn.cc/revenue

This statistics page is a community-led effort by Meile dVPN which is a core Sentinel ecosystem contributor.

Checkout http://dvpn.cc/dashboard to see more statistics including the current node leaderboard (in terms of # of hours subscribed)

http://Docs.sentinel.co is now live!

This docs page provides a clear insight into the dVPN ecosystem for new community members.

Created and maintained by core ecosystem contributor 'Trinity' https://trinityvalidator.com.

The upcoming 'Sentinel Growth DAO' will incentivize community led initiatives such as this and encourage community members to contribute in other ways apart from purely technical aspects.

This Growth DAO will provide transparency on the process of community initiative funding.

The Sentinel ecosystem would like to reveal the Turkey focused #Bağımsız 🇹🇷 dVPN application. Bağımsız means 'independent' in Turkish and this application is managed by a Turkish team with a focus on providing unrestricted trustless internet access to millions of individuals in Turkey.

This application is extremely relevant given Turkish Internet regulations which have seen the blocking of critical information portals such as https://Twitter.com or http://Youtube.com at various points in the past.

This dVPN application will be launching on iOS and Android within the coming days of sufficient testing and will target user acquisition through the use of online-influencers and social media marketing. This will be the first dVPN application in the Sentinel ecosystem that will have targeted marketing campaigns.

The application will be free at first and will in the future transition to an AD based model along with a premium offering after attracting a sufficient userbase.

September saw 7,040 Sentinel $dVPN subscriptions globally.

The top 10 countries amounted to 5,778:

🇺🇸 - 3,378🥇
🇩🇪 - 494🥈
🇬🇧 - 364🥉
🇳🇱 - 325
🇸🇬 - 249
🇫🇮 - 215
🇨🇦 - 204
🇮🇹 - 190
🇦🇺 - 183
🇫🇷 - 176

Source: https://metabase.mathnodes.com/public/question/666fe1d2-b49c-4055-b2d4-12af4a9e6cca

Credit: @MathNodes

Meile dVPN v1.7.11 is officially available for Windows and OS X.

Features include:
🔐 OS X Intel Apple Certificate Signed
🐞 IBC Payment Bug Fix
✅ Minor improvements

Get it @ meile.app

September saw 2,808,595 $dVPN in revenue on the Sentinel Network.

Sentinel's competitive edge over traditional VPNs drives consistent demand, leading to increased revenue as more VPN apps launch on its platform.

Source: https://dvpn.cc/dashboard

It's Sunday, which means one thing...

it's Sentinel morality time!

This week we ask the following:

Why do you think decentralized VPNs are necessary? 

The best answer (determined by the admins) wins 10,000 $dVPN.

📢 gm DAOers! To start our journey in building growth for Sentinel, let's get a show of hands for our community Poker Night!

📅 This Saturday, 6pm UTC
🎲NL Texas Holdem'
👌Free entry
💰 2.5M $dVPN up for grabs!
🎙 Join the DAO voice chat

Sign-up link dropping on Thursday.

The $dVPN token is now available on the Leap Cosmos wallet.

Now: Browser 💻
Next: Mobile 📱

As new mobile #web3 focused decentralized VPN applications deploy on Sentinel, the Leap wallet will be vital in how users pay for their VPN subscriptions.

Get the Leap wallet: https://www.leapwallet.io/cosmos

gm Sentinel Growth DAOlists

We've created a product testing group, with specific topics for applications that require YOUR feedback!

We will incentivise rewards for feedback to improve on the app suite.

If you're interested in these apps succeeding, please join the group, read the pinned message in the general chat and get ready to test!

https://t.me/VPNproducttesting

The Sentinel Poker Night is upon us, hosted by the Sentinel Growth DAO.

🃏Saturday 28th October - 6pm UTC
🪙 2.5 million $dVPN prize pool
🔗Link: https://thepoker.pro/?tournamentId=1866
🔑Pass: sentinel42

For more information, please join the DAO Telegram. https://t.me/SentinelGrowthDAO

50 players turned up for the Sentinel Poker Night!

2.5 Million $dVPN tokens will be awarded to the top 7 players

1 million $dVPN will be awarded to the winner.

More games will run in the coming time.

Join The Sentinel Growth DAO Telegram and follow the Official Sentinel Social pages to take part.

https://t.me/SentinelGrowthDAO

Why is Sentinel in the top 10 on Cosmos for transactions?

Unlike #DeFi protocols, Sentinel's transactions are not focused on trading. Instead, they are used to establish connections, manage VPN subscriptions, and pay node hosts.

The more people using the Sentinel Network, the more transactions there will be.

Sentinel does not log users' internet history or personal data on the blockchain.

If you have a twitter account, vote for DVPN for the DVPN ecosystem to be able to have Sunny's (founder of Osmosis) insights into network expansion and application usage growth.

https://fxtwitter.com/sunnya97/status/1719802705450045801?s=20

The # of unique users that have connected to a dVPN node on the Sentinel blockchain has increased to 22,615 in the month of October 2023, representing a 30x+ increase over roughly 700 unique users in the month of July before the chain upgrade occurred to enable on-chain subscription plans.

The dVPN network is set to scale well beyond 100k active users and this is all possible thanks to the fully decentralized structure of the on-chain subscription plan.

Full-fledged stats website launching tomorrow allowing for the real-time transparency of critical metrics representing the usage and growth of the Sentinel ecosystem.

Connection and disconnection happens on-chain, each unique user can be tracked to an exact dVPN 'session' through on-chain data, with IP address information never being revealed on-chain.

The Sentinel 'Stats Engine' will be open-sourced allowing for the community to build their own analytical dashboards on-top of it.