Community Interview with Dan Edlebeck of Sentinel (DVPN), April 29th

TicoJohnny
7 min readJun 1, 2021

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This community interview is a little older than this post date but the information is still very relevant. On April 29th, we had the opportunity to talk directly with Dan Edlebeck the CEO of Exidio and Co-Founder of $DVPN. Dan gave a ton of good news and insightful information on the progression of DVPN from SENT, and covered alot of the going-ons with Sentinel. Here is a transcription of the questions and answers for those of you who may have missed it!

Sentinel Network

The Sentinel Network hosts open-source distributed and decentralized applications that provide users with assurance that their session information is not being logged, their communication is not being stored, and that not even the creator of the application can view any of their data.

Dan Edlebeck is Co-Founder and CEO at Exidio. As a connector of thought-leaders and doers in the blockchain space, I build diverse networks to achieve high-impact goals. With 10 years of experience in business development, marketing, and operations, I foster strategic partnerships and grow virtual and in-person communities. Armed with technical knowledge and industry experience, I can speak to your dev team or your grandma about the value of your tech stack. Relentlessly entrepreneurial and optimistic, I leverage lean resources to drive impressive results. I have an ambitious vision to make the world a better place, harnessing the capabilities of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

📑 White Paper

💌 Contacts

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Q: How do you see DVPN network utilized beyond VPN services? Where are you looking to innovate next using the established network?

A: We believe that a peer-to-peer bandwidth sharing network will become a valuable asset as the internet evolves. When we move to more natively decentralized networks, internet packet routing is going to be a crucial layer of the decentralized web. We see decentralized VPN as the first and most obvious use case of a p2p bandwidth marketplace. However, as the network becomes more robust, the applications that are considered VPN become broader. The ability to route one’s traffic through multiple nodes across the world while obfuscating the metadata to one’s ISP is critically important. TOR is a first glimpse at this.

Q: To my knowledge iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal already encrypt what you write locally but they still rely on a central server to move messages around. How does DVPN play a role in that?

A: Yes, messages on chat apps can be end-to-end encrypted. That is a strong aspect of privacy. There are layers to these privacy features and Signal has proven to be the strongest against a threat to privacy invasion.

Use cases for VPN reach outside of just encrypting messages between individuals. A truly secure, end-to-end encrypted, open source VPN service provides both access to data (geo-restricted content) as well as provides privacy and security to your data (encryption of bits). So to be able to access all uses of the web (not just messaging) end-to-end encrypted plus full access to the web (not just what your local IP provides), it is important to connect to an open source, decentralized VPN product.

Q: Where can I find up to date info on how to setup a cosmos Sentinel dvpn node? I have several sleeping vps…

A: You can find documentation here: https://docs.sentinel.co/dVPN/Nodes/tendermint/

Also please feel free to join the telegram for details on DVPN node hosting: https://t.me/SentinelNodeNetwork

Can you offer any information on the hotbit integration? Will they support Sentinel going forward? Any timeline?

A: I know that Hotbit is working on transiting the token. I have seen that they swapped SENT (ERC20) tokens to DVPN (mainnet) tokens. That is viable on the blockchain. I don’t have that tx handy, but it can be found on Etherscan.

I believe they will soon go live trading the mainnet token and again allow deposits and withdraws. I am informed that members from the Foundation have been reaching out and are in contact with Hotbit. I know myself and the rest of the Sentinel community eagerly await Hotbit’s full integration.

Can you give any additional information on existing/traditional VPNs that may be transitioning to Sentinel. We have heard there is a VPN with 5k paying customers that plans to transition to Sentinel. Has that happened already? When do you expect that to happen. Are there any others in the pipelines and what is the strategy to attract these companies to switch?

A: Thanks for the question! This is something I am very excited about. Yes, we (Exidio) are in communication with several companies (six total) plus others that have expressed initial interest in building their own white-labeled decentralized VPN products on the Sentinel network.

At the moment, we are working on partnerships to continue to grow more dVPN nodes sharing bandwidth on the network and then transitioning all nodes to be Cosmos IBC based dVPN nodes. After that is completed, we will work on fully integrating our first private label companies onto the Sentinel network. We want to ensure healthy, sustainable growth to ensure the network scales effectively. The first customers building on Sentinel are crucial.

Q: When will IBC testnet start (last date mentioned was end of April) and how long will it approximately last? With Covid on the rise in India how does it effect the development of Sentinel and what are the precautions to keep the India based team safe?

A: IBC will be launched by Sentinel and is getting voted on by the SNT Foundation. I believe the plan is still on track for testnet to launch according to mentioned dates :)

And yes, COVID has had a real impact on our work with Exidio. As we are based primarily out of Bangalore, this has made it challenging as the city is currently under lockdown. We have communicated with our office to pause our contract. We are going back to remote work a d it has not slowed down work progress. We will get back in the office when it is safe and we are monitoring closely.

Q: What do you see DVPN being used for? What kind of commercial applications does it have?

A: We see applications for VPNs in general growing in adoption and use across sectors and tangible use cases. The market has shown this as well with the VPN industry growing at an exponential rate.

Commercial applications include being able to route traffic securely and privately, access to secure intranets, and being able to leverage public networks for access to connectivity while not compromising digital security.

These applications become incredibly wide-ranging when applied to a variety of industries and commercial needs.

Q: I am happy to see a new option for decentralized VPN and I am interested in the fact Sentinel has a real world use case beyond market hype that brings real world value.

I saw mention that it is possible to use a Raspberry Pi for DVPN hosting and wanted to know if there is any more documentation to get that started? I have a few Pi’s I have been searching for a usage and this seems like a great way to contribute.

A: Yes, that is correct! You can see documentation here: https://docs.sentinel.co/dVPN/Nodes/tendermint/

Also please feel free to join the telegram for details on DVPN node hosting: https://t.me/SentinelNodeNetwork

Q: You describe Sentinel as a hub for DVPN applications in a podcast I had heard, can you elaborate on what kinds of apps can be built with Sentinel? Is web hosting an option?

A: Sentinel is a baselayer bandwidth network for anyone to build their own custom dVPN on top of. Companies or individuals can build a custom decentralized VPN product leveraging the Sentinel peer-to-peer bandwidth marketplace. If they would like any support on the build of the front-end applications or the integration on the network, they are free to reach out to me or anyone at Exidio (exidio.co) and we are happy to help them out and see the Sentinel network grow.

Q: What are some of the risks associated with lending bandwidth for DVPN services? Does it expose the device in any way? If someone is doing nefarious activities can it be traced to the host device IP? Are there any legal concerns with hosting a DVPN node?

A: As with any network, an exit node does have access to the metadata of the traffic that is transmitted on the network. However, in a multihop architecture, the exit node does not have access to the IP address of the user that is surfing the web. As an exit node, you can prove you are participating in a distributed network if requested by an authority. There is legal precedent that the exit node is not liable for the internet trafficked through their node by proving they are part of a distributed private network.

Further details on the tips and legal rights/precedents for running an exit node can be found at https://dvpnalliance.org/exit-node

Q: Do you have any book recommendations?

A: A book I am currently reading was recommended by an investor Etiënne vantKruys (here is a great piece recently published on him). The book is The Art of Execution by Lee Freeman‐Shor. I also really like is Culture.com: How the Best Startups Make it Happen by Bob Stringer. Bob was a mentor of mine this past summer in the Babson Summer Catalyst program.

Q: Theres been rumours about Sentinel Airdrop for users? Rumour or not, if not could we get little more information about it what is all about.

A: I believe what community members are referring to is the Staking Incentive for Long Term Token Holders program. This is a unique program for holders of SENT tokens (as ERC20 tokens) that swapped their tokens to DVPN mainnet tokens to be able to gain a significant upside in additional tokens for those that are long-term-minded about Sentinel. More details are in the blog below. A note: Hotbit has not yet completed the token swap, so I would imagine there will need to be an extension for this program until that is completed. (Update: Extension has been integrated until June 15)

https://medium.com/sentinel/staking-incentive-for-long-term-token-holders-5793253e0a3c

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