The idea of buying WiFi or messaging communication on a layer 2 internet or No KYC peer-to-peer internet that completely reject’s the government’s infrastructure and surveillance is very appealing. The ideal situation is using some kind of no-government DNS messenger such as Briar with bluetooth or LoRaWAN messengers with layer 2 internet. However, many projects have implementations of this that are either not yet ready for real use, or I disagree with their approach.
This is a general overview of SOME of the projects in this space. Please keep in mind that mentioning a cryptocurrency does NOT mean I’m endorsing their coin. Many of our readers dislike shitcoins. But this isn’t an investment article, it’s a tech article to benefit YOU and not to promote the coins, so you can someday use these concepts in whatever currency you do like.
Also check out Reticulum, which is an open source framework for doing this without these networks below. But Reticulum is not a cryptocurrency or a hardware seller, it would require you to set it up with your local community and then connect to other networks.
Pro/Con of Decentralized peer-to-peer WiFi or LoRa networks
Helium
https://www.helium.com
Coin: HNT token on Solana blockchain
Pro: Largest LoRa (Long Range Wide Area Network) out there. This is bluetooth based coverage for IoT. The technology can potentially be used for LoRaWAN messengers which is basically a full-blown off-grid 2nd internet type mesh networks
Con: It’s not WiFi, we’re talking about IoT bluetooth. The range on WiFi is much lower. They may be developing something similar for WiFi in the future. There’s also KYC & surveillance issues presented by the company.
Pollen Mobile (pictured above)
pollenmobile.io
Coin: PCN token on Solana blockchain
Pro: Peer-to-peer WiFi, this is basically like a reseller market. People buy physical infrastructure and erect it on a satellite thing on their roof. It’s teamed with multiple providers, but one is Starlink, providing a secondary market for Starlink.
Con: They will be doing PCN crypto payments in the future, but right now, it’s temporarily only US dollars. It’s unclear when they will shift. Their test pilot involved government officials voluntarily agreeing in California, so not exactly crypto-anarchy but still progress.
Chirp
https://www.chirpstack.io/
Coin: CHIRP, w/ backing from Sui
Pro: This is real LoRa off-grid, and not a reseller like Pollen. 150+ cities. Hardware is original.
License-free 2.4 GHz LoRa frequency so fuck regulation.
Con: Managed by AI. That’s lame bullshit for decentralization. I can’t find the white paper on their website, but I can find the influencers program. That’s a bad sign.
WiFi Map
https://www.wifimap.io/
Pro: Crowdsourced WiFi mapping funded by crypto. In other words, people map out where you can get free WiFi for a reward for updating the map.
Con: Proprietary AI technologies help manage the map. Socialist purpose, to provide “free coverage to all”. This is NOT about defying the government. They’re hosted on Amazon and use Google.
Drop Wireless
https://dropwireless.io
Pro: Blockchain w/ LoRaWAN, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and more services. A lot of options for users.
Con: They openly WANT to collect metadata and use it for AI machine learning. This company should stop pretending to care about blockchain and just be a gig economy company. Maybe they’re trying to get around laws by masquerading as decentralized.
Karrier.One
https://karrier.one/
Coin: KONE, EVM compatible. They use Polygon layer 2 for cost
Pro: WiFi and cell service peer to peer
Con: Tries to comply with telecom regulations by tying blockchain identity to government phone numbers.
ThreeFold
Pro: GrapheneOS phones with decentralized service network.
Con: Spread out too thin on capital. Why are you selling pre-orders of phones if you need millions of dollars to do a network also? We already got Graphene phones, just sell/give us the new tech.
Resources
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Where can you learn more about Decentralized infrastructure?
Check out this site listing projects, https://depinhub.io/
Reticulum is a LoRaWAN network with self-sovereign identity.
https://reticulum.network/
As one of the MANY examples of LoRaWAN messengers. Here’s TheNico14’s github:
https://github.com/TheNico14/LoRaMessenger
And open source LoRaWAN software: