7Proxies

We have developed a system for people to host their node as a proxy location to access the internet anonymously without restriction. The core system is built using libp2p and Unlock Protocol. We allow the hosts to set up their internet as a proxy access point and sell their node's access authorization as membership based NFTs using Unlock on Arbitrum.

The goal of this project is to create a proof of concept for a decentralized Virtual Private Network (dVPN), supplied by the people and access by the people. We imagine this service will have a strong market demand as people, and organizations, who use VPN care about the quality and transparency of privacy. The decentralized nature of the service means people can see the entirety of the code and see how we ensure that data and privacy are not compromised in the process. Moreover, there would be no single point of failure or controlling figure that may also compromise a user's information and identity. Additionally, this enables a free market approached price pressure for VPN services as host would not price higher than the available services.

Though we have only implemented SOCKS, we plan to integrate it with OpenVPN and substitute its existing public key infrastructure (PKI) with Lit Protocol to make this a true VPN service. In the future, we may further enrich the network by enabling the node hosts to form DAOs and develop a decentralized Content Delivery Network (dCDN). We also want to ensure the quality of user and avoid any abuse or unlawful use of the network by using DID, Aleo or Axiom to verify the user's online identity and estimate the user's risk of hate speech or unlawful act though ZK processing. Lastly, we want to use biconomy to allow hosts to authorize conditional access or incentive with Account Abstraction.

The key technologies are @libp2p and @Unlock Protocol on @Arbitrum. Hosts with internet access, like an AirBnB host, may access "rent" out their internet access as membership/time based NFTs generated by the Unlock Smart Contract. A user with a valid NFT may access the proxy through the given node ID provided by libp2p, thus allowing the world to see only the IP address associated with the given node ID and not the user's actual IP. To enhance the user's identity and privacy, we had planned to leverage @Lit Protocol, with the condition of a valid NFT (Based on Unlock), as a public key infrastructure (PKI) support the tunnel to encrypt and decrypt the content and data, including user identity, being transmitted.

The UI is built using @Scaffold-ETH2, we then use @WalletConnect Inbox to the allow hosts to communicate with their respective node subscriber, users with NFTs issued by the host's Unlock smart contract, for usage verification and/or additional communication. We deployed a new subgraph (The Graph) of the all the node usage as well as their collective supply and demand.