App developers can utilize the Sentinel Network to access Sentinel’s bandwidth marketplace for dVPN applications.
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The Sentinel Network, a decentralized p2p bandwidth marketplace that supports the Sentinel dVPN application, is now live on the Cosmos mainnet.
“Sentinel is the first project that focuses on offering privacy at the network level to any blockchain or dApp,” said Dan Edlebeck, co-founder of Exidio, which contributed to development of the Sentinel dVPN protocol. “Once integrated, these blockchains or applications will be able to provide their users with both privacy and censorship resistance. Simply, the purpose of the Sentinel ecosystem is to empower universal access to the internet in a trusted and provable manner.”
Sentinel Network allows anyone to be able to sell their bandwidth on its marketplace. Developers can utilize the Sentinel Protocol, built with Cosmos SDK, to build applications, both public and private, that use the Sentinel Network’s bandwidth marketplace for dVPN applications.
Users will be able to sell their bandwidth to power the Sentinel Network and be rewarded in $SENT for doing so. As Sentinel’s testnet was originally built on Ethereum, a token swap will be launched Saturday to convert holders’ ERC-20 $SENT tokens to Sentinel’s native Cosmos-based $DVPN. $DVPN will be used to secure the network, participate in on-chain governance, pay node holders and rent bandwidth.
In February, Sentinel completed a $3.5M strategic capital raise.
dVPN vs VPN
Generally, a virtual private network (VPN) lets its users create a secure connection to another network. It is often used to access restricted websites and content, shield browsing activity from public WiFi and provide a degree of anonymity by hiding locations.
VPN applications mask a user’s IP address, which is like a fingerprint of your device. VPNs generally help obfuscate that fingerprint. A VPN server will create an encrypted tunnel for your internet traffic that shields it from governments, ISPs and others.
Some governments block certain websites, like Google or Wikipedia, based on geo-fencing, which means they can block it for people within different geographic regions. VPNs help evade this by letting people connect to servers in areas outside of the geo-fenced one.
As Top 10 VPN has regularly reported, nearly three-quarters of free VPNs on the market have some level of vulnerability, share or expose customer data, or even contain malware.
A decentralized VPN (dVPN) takes these privacy measures a few steps further in that it can’t be compromised by a central actor or shut down by shutting down the company or server running it. In this way, it’s more resilient than a centralized VPN. Additionally, since all the code is open sourced, there isn’t a need to trust a third party – users can just check themselves.
The initial focus of the Sentinel ecosystem is to provide a framework for the construction of dVPNs, according to Peter Mancuso, COO of Exidio.