Hi, we are the founders of Anyone. Ask us anything!

@irreverent_sol the greyed out box is the actual path to the anon client software, it can not be edited while the relay is toggled to ON and it is not related to the unknown public key. This is a visual bug in the WEB UI and we will upload a patch on our docs with a fix soon.

@william To start off with an important clarification - no hardware unit will be used as an exit node in the network (all hardware form middle relays, and only interact with other nodes in the network).

It is also important to understand that running an Exit relay requires more maintenance and security awareness than in comparison to a Middle relay. Exit nodes are generally and recommended to be hosted on VPS and not residential or privately held IPs.

Exit nodes can be configured to block certain sites and ports, called Exit Policies, to prevent those connections. We also have plans to create a community-curated list of sites to block by default- you can see more in our whitepaper (anyone.io/whitepaper).

@Centurion_2K Observed bandwidth is the basis of consensus weight - which is what eventually determines your rewards. The observed bandwidth is not directly comparable to your actual internet uplink / downlink speed, instead it’s a measure of the traffic going through your relay (which in turn is based on that consensus weight score) 

Put shortly- there’s nothing specific to do to increase observed bandwidth besides being consistently online, and maintaining a good internet connection. Check from your relayup.local page if you have a daily or weekly limit on bandwidth that’s being hit, too- most users won’t need it

@DepinMasterMind Our market is the entire internet (certainly larger than just web3!) Right now, all our apps and network are free to use. We hit a peak of 20k+ daily active clients a few months ago, and aim to reach 100k this year with the release of our apps.

We also approach privacy differently to VPNs - our aim is to integrate it directly within apps, so users can experience trustless privacy without changing their UX. That opens up a new b2b market which has scarcely been explored

@Amanda_Anyone Thanks for that! And what is the main use case that clients on the Anyone network find appealing?

@DepinMasterMind Anyone is primarily used to enhance online anonymity and freedom, making it a very useful tool for privacy advocates, people in repressive environments or people who simply are sick of being under surveillance of databrokers or similar.

@cl0ten Okay I see and the biggest alternative to Anyone at the moment are the VPN tools available online?

@DepinMasterMind Yes, but most VPN tools available or based on a centralized cluster of VPN servers controlled by the provider and compared to Anyone client, (which is decentralized and ran by independent operators around the world)

Regular VPN providers usually have the ability to extract logs and IP information if they choose to do so, but nobody on the Anyone network can derive that information to sell or hand over to somebody that requests it

So even if a provider says that they keep no logs, they can, even if they say that they don’t track users, they can.

@cl0ten Got it, I see!

@DepinMasterMind There are other decentralized solutions like the TOR network but they are quite slow and unusable.  We are here to try and disrupt the VPN industry while having completely trustless privacy. 

@Farkus This is a browser app with a VPN-like protection built in. Unlike most VPNs, there are no central servers that can track you, instead, traffic goes through our onion routing network.

@Farkus The Anyone Network is the VPN, the decentralised, anonymous and encrypted backbone that enables apps to bootstrap the network.

The Anyone browser hosts a light-weight client to create circuits to send data via the Anyone network specifically for the purpose of browsing.

While the desktop VPN app that is currently in closed testing for macOS and Windows, provides a wider coverage for your local apps to be routed trough the Anyone Network.

Taking the Anyone hardware, connecting to this hotspot will route all of the clients data via the Anyone Network.

We offer a couple of different ways to bootstrap our VPN network and are mentioned here: https://docs.anyone.io/connect