HandyCon 2024 | Day 2 - SOLAR Labs - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QllzXdPFgig

Transcript:
(00:03) [Music] oh all right good evening good morning good afternoon we are in day two I'm just Jo I was I was just catching up on some previous sessions it's been really really uh technical today we getting a lot of different projects and and protocols to and right our session right now I'm excited for solar Labs from The Sentinel protocol we've always had a good relationship with Sentinel over the years uh from handshake community so uh I'm really excited to learn more what's been happening I know you guys have been
(01:03) building quite a bit over the years in the in the Bulls and in the Bears so Alexander uh would you like to get started yeah absolutely so uh first of all good morning everyone as they say uh glad to be there and yeah thank you for for inviting me there uh so uh my name is Alexander LF and I'm a CEO and founder of Sol Labs the company which is core contributor to Sentinel um Sentinel has been there for years already uh developing and promoting uh the UPC like the technology that currently is uh revolutionizing the VPN Market it is
(01:46) decentralized VPN so what what is the Sentinel itself uh Sentinel is a uh blockchain uh a decentralized network which allows you to from one hand offer your uh unused bandwidth to the network for other users to use and uh from other hand you can be a client which uh which is able to connect to the remote endpoint and use it as an exit point to the internet protecting your real IP address and your privacy uh basically acting the same way as Tor does but uh in a way more reliable way as it is much more um energy efficient it's much much
(02:30) faster than than T and it's also monetized which is the most important part of it you can pretty much treat Sentinel as a um let's say dvpn Marketplace so the idea behind it is that uh anyone can offer their dvpn servers to the network and uh let others use it as a as a VPN servers for others to come online um for for providing your own server for others to use you can get rewarded with the dvpn tokens or any other cryptocurrency which is supported by uh Cosmos IBC payments so uh Sentinel have been there for years as I already
(03:11) told you and uh well uh for last two years we made a huge leap forward uh also um thanks for uh thanks to the handshake uh for it so uh what we did is we not only buil the chain itself uh as as a product and network itself as a product but we also made made it possible for other companies such as solar Labs my own company itself built uh consumer oriented applications on top of a sentinel so one of such companies which is building on top of Sentinel is my company called solar labs and we're building an application called solar
(03:51) dvpn so solar dvpn is the app which pretty much act as any other VPN application out there uh and you cannot tell uh from the very beginning that it has uh this VB 3.0 technology under the hood and we believe that this is the way how it should be uh for uh for getting a mass adoption to that technology uh the problem there uh with the web 3.
(04:20) 0 uh that many of the solutions that web 3.0 guys are offering are quite complex and requiring people to have uh some sort of like expertise in certain areas uh and uh our goal were to make was to made a product which my grandma would use and she wouldn't even have any clue that there is a decentralization under the hood that there is a web 3.
(04:47) 0 under the hood that there is a blockchain but she will still get all the benefits out of it right so uh we took it as a goal and we made our very first uh app application on top of a sentinel which were available on all the platforms it was tremendous success we got uh tens of thousands done loads worldwide and application is now being widely used uh across all over the globe and we receive a lot of positive feedback uh from uh from many countries where other VPN Services doesn't work uh such countries such as turkistan China
(05:27) Russia and many others where there is a internet so our motto is we work where others don't and it's pretty much described uh why uh why decentralization in VPN is crucial so the point there is um there is a two uh basically things people use VPN for first one is to ensure their privacy well this is the obvious one right you would like to protect yourself uh from uh others uh lurking around and watching what you're doing online and the second thing is quite more common I guess is uh bypassing Regional
(06:06) restrictions let's say if we go to China uh where is a a lot of Internet Resources out there are blocked or you go to turkistan where pretty much whole internet is is under restrictions uh you can't easily go online there because uh because you need a VPN to do so and uh uh while centralized VPN services are not doing quite well uh combating this censorship because uh these centralized VPN services are being banned itself uh we do much better uh since uh it is it is much more easier for governments to
(06:43) go after centralized entities right for example if we talk let's say some proom VPN Express VPN nor VPN whatever might it be um in order to ban it you don't have to do much you can go after one single legal entity which has all the servers under itself and you just BM them you BN their uh IP ranges you BN their networks and you B their servers you B them their NPA endpoints and application just become useless uh that's why many of VPN application doesn't work in turkistan and I'm proud to say that solar dvpn is the only
(07:20) application in turkistan that operates uh in 100% cases and we got a lot of positive feedback from Turkmenistan users uh that they are able to access web freely without any restrictions using solar DPN and they don't have any problems with it so uh in that term uh decentralization brings its perks uh for for VPN services and we believe that is really the future since decentralization for vpns are key part of keeping them available for the customers so uh that's that's pretty much it about the application itself uh let's talk about
(08:00) growth of the Sentinel over the years and how we uh doing at the moment so as you can see there we have a stats page uh it's available publicly stats. sentinel.com least 12,000 servers uh which other people shared uh with the community as a exit points and uh this cannot be compared with any other VPN service out there because no one has that much uh servers available worldwide and uh as you can say um we also see that there is a one of the points of uh protecting VPN service itself from being banned is to have that amount of servers
(09:05) uh if we talk about Pro VPN right uh they have around uh probably something like thousand uh VPN services available well government can go after them and ban them one by one and make them unavailable exactly which happened uh in Russia uh this is exactly what happened in Russia uh but this is not the case with the Sentinel in solar gpn application uh since um you just cannot go after all of those servers because uh these applications these servers aren't M managed by one entity they are in different networks and most importantly
(09:44) not of them even have a static IP address so they can dynamically change and while government can try ban several of endpoints there uh like dozens of more will appear next hour and uh that's that's really great part uh of of the centralization there it's being much more resilient and resistant uh to online censorship so uh we can see that uh applications are being used on a constant basis and we see that there's online at least three, people always uh using our application simultaneously and
(10:20) as you can see from here uh only for today over three almost four terabytes of data were transmitted through the Sentinel Network which is which is great growth uh to be honest uh that's uh that's about the network and it's uh success over the last year I would say uh but there is more uh of what we have done and uh what is currently being done by others uh we decided that success for Sentinel and for decentralized VPN overall uh will not come if we only the one market player with a sentinel blockchain right so we need to allow
(11:01) others to build on top of it uh that's why solar uh Labs introduced uh solar Labs SDK uh which is the platform for building your own Sentinel uh Sentinel based VPN application and you can uh benefit from all of all of its features all of its capabilities just by integrating this SDK into your application enabling this decentralization so we already had a huge leap forward there uh bringing such applications as bum's VPN uh it's called independent VPN in Turkish language it's an application developed by Turkish Developers for
(11:41) turkey uh for turkey market and uh we uh we were the ones who provided them with this SDK which made it possible uh for for them to create their own very decentralized VPN service uh without even having to understand all this uh complex stuff how does blockchain Works under the hood because we already did it for them and it's completely open source available for everyone and we encourage people to build on top of it uh to make sure that everyone is uh everyone is able to uh create their own application top
(12:18) of the Sentinel there is much more applications to come uh I can tell at least 20 applications are currently being developed by Third parties using RSD k um we believe that for the next year and this year we will have plenty of releases uh from other companies which are building on top of a sentinel and um I would say that if we take a look at the web 3.
(12:49) 0 uh overall there is a to be honest not that not that much of a project which has that huge uh real use uh like proof of they have proof of Concepts right but they don't have that much example examples of a massive real usage and Sentinel is one of those products um but let's talk about the way how Sentinel is becoming better in applications and S not becoming better with a handshake so uh back few years ago we integrated handshake DNS in all of our applications to make sure that people are not only able to uh go online fre really protect them themselves from
(13:31) internet censorship and uh uh online Espionage uh but we also would like to make the senel as a Gateway for people to go to web 3.0 world uh that's why all of the applications that are built on top of a sentinel with a Sol laap SDC are handshake enabled so by default while users connecting to the uh any of the Sentinel endpoints uh we enabling handshake on their device automatically Mak them able to connect to the any of the websites listed on the handshake DNS so that's uh that's the way to go and
(14:09) that's the uh the vision that we have is to make sure that all of the web 3.0 fruits are available for people uh with any level of expertise with any level of Education in terms of blockchain web 3.0 so even my grandma would use it right and U uh that's what we do uh if we talk about our applications uh you can download them uh on app store and Google Play they're available for free we offering a free plan uh they're also available on Mac OS and uh we're having upcoming releases for Windows and Linux
(14:52) coming next month uh and also uh if you go on a sentinel official sentinel website uh can browse around and see other applications which are available out there and try them as well um yeah so I guess not not sure how does it work on this conference but uh is there a section with the questions I would love to answer them ah okay I see in the comments All right so who owns Sentinel uh that's a great question so there is no single let's say ownership over the senal right it's it's a community which
(15:29) builds build uh which builds together uh although I can say that there is a let's say a team of core contributors who helps uh Community the most who leads the development but we cannot say that they own Sentinel right uh because Sentinel is decentralized by its nature so it's not owned by any single entity for example solars is one of the major contributors and other company called B steps which is located in Scotland uh they acting as a as a distributor so we we're using their assistants to release
(16:05) applications to Google Play and App Store uh but there is no single lingal entity who owns something El so answer I hope you I answered your questions there uh is there how difficult of a task to this to set up a dvpn for a PL like myself well uh that's a great question it's uh super easy we have a knowledge base which is uh well written and uh it also allows you to set up your own dvpn node or connect to dvpn yourself or even build your own application um in order to do all of that I will share a knowledge based link with you guys I put
(16:44) it in the chat so you can you can check it out it explains pretty much everything about the dvpn coin itself uh we have a c white paper there and also there is a much more about using VPN itself uh such as enrolling notes using dvpn wallets and staking and much more so yeah feel free to visit that link uh on the chat here I believe and uh and you'll learn more about Sentinel and what we do and how does it work in in particular does the core team own The Sentinel TLD on a handshake not at the moment to be honest
(17:25) uh we do not have uh a domain name on a hand just yet uh but I I believe uh that eventually we will have one and we will also uh endorse uh other teams uh which are building on top of a sentinel to have them as well all right so yeah uh someone texted me in a telegram that I need to show QR codes uh to download our applications there you go uh feel free to scan them uh again our own Sentinel applications uh Sentinel based applications solar tvpn is available on both stores uh we currently fighting against Huawei to
(18:14) make our applications available uh but yeah you know uh they they they have a lot of uh problems with us explaining us why Taiwan is not a country and why Hong Kong shouldn't be listed as a country uh on our application so we have arguments with them regarding that but yeah uh I believe that we will uh we will solve it and the last question uh has any government requested App Store Play Store to take your application down uh well we did not have uh this uh kind of concern just yet but we had several requests from different governments
(18:50) including Chinese one uh Chinese government sent us a letter an official letter requesting us to obtain a license for doing VPN business in their country otherwise remove application from being available for Chinese users well we obviously told them to yeah I don't know if I can swear there but yeah so we did not reply them eventually uh and uh we we just ignored their uh their complaint and we continue to operate in China we will not uh ever uh share any data with any government since we do not possess any of it and we
(19:27) also do not cooperate in terms of restricting access uh if some of the governments ask us to do so so yeah uh do you use Tik Tok no I don't yeah okay so uh yeah thank you guys for inviting me there I guess that will be uh end of my speech and uh I'll pass the mic back to you guys well go ahead I think we still got a few minutes I don't know maybe we can maybe we can pick pick Alex's brain uh about some other topics if we're for go ahead yeah absolutely how did you do that cool thing with the video like
(20:17) your screen and screen is that like on your computer yeah I'm on my PC and I have this uh OBS Studio installed so yeah just quickly made some uh screens before getting there that's awesome um yeah I guess what do you think about Tik Tok I mean not just Tik Tok but like us uh censorship or what's happening with the US Tik Tok news well uh I I have I have uh like no particular opinion on that but I strongly believe that it's not up to government to decide what people should use uh it doesn't
(20:57) matter whether Tik Tok is is a spyware or not uh it's not for someone to decide if I would like to use it so I don't need any I'm like a full grown man right I I don't need parent uh above me telling me which apps I should use and which apps I should not and uh this idea of governments uh disabling applications and removing applications for their own citizens without asking them if they want it to want it to happen is ridiculous and um as we can see for past year many of governments actually doing so and uh the
(21:35) most uh the most of the times they explaining that with the Security National Security concerns which is like I would say because uh come on guys uh if your National Security is being threatened by an application where 15 years old girls are dancing for music and then I have big like big bad news for you so I I don't honestly believe that uh there's any national security concerns it's just uh it's sort of a power play and uh I don't want to be involved into that uh so uh my strong opinion on that is everything uh
(22:16) should be available for free internet should not be censored uh by any means anyhow and everybody everybody everybody should be able to access whatever hell they want uh as long as uh as long as they understand what they are doing but I mean I think what they're what the Tik Tok band means is like you said it's like censorship it's just a Gateway for us censorship uh across the board it's just a it's just a first of of others you know I think one that's I think the main point of the law from
(22:50) what I understand right so it's kind of like the new great firewall of USA yeah well uh I initially uh moved uh I was born in Russia and eventually moved from Russia to Estonia so uh back in Russia we have uh we had the same issue back in 2011 uh they made up a law uh for a specific web service where they explained that uh well this web service is bad we need to ban it for people in Russia to protect them blah blah blah and they made this uh Russian firewall which uh which which basically banned this specific service and uh you as you
(23:34) can guess they didn't stop there obviously so they used that law and that uh Russian internet firewall to ban all the hell from the internet you know uh they they took down all the opposition websites just few years after they took down some free media Outlets they took down some applications and uh they they now doing that actively you know just just today we got news that Russia banned Google play uh like whole Google Play isn't available in Russia at the moment and people who are using Android they are un available to update their
(24:09) applications uh like install applications from the official stores and Etc why they doing that it's unclear uh does it beneficial is it beneficial for Russian people no it's not so uh it's like sort of a uh sort of initia uh that no one wants but uh government governments still doing that so you know it's it's what is a border in a truly decentralized World border well that's a more sort of a philosophical question I guess maybe it's a blockchain blockchains are borders communities um but I think in Chinese
(24:50) like you spoke about the Russian firewall in in China I was there when they started getting blocked I I lived there before the uh Google and Facebook were blocked and um the story of the great firewall that I understand it was for Good Intentions at the beginning it was for blocking um like child pornography and uh and uh more about like porn at the first stage so I think a lot of these start with maybe what they believe is good intention and then they just you know once they're able to they just keep doing
(25:23) more once uh Once Upon a Time um Tim Cook uh well apple is not a big uh guys in terms of uh decentralization and freedoms they exactly the opposite I would say but uh Tim Cook once said a very good phrase which I remember and I love to repeat it uh you cannot build a tool for censorship for um Good Guys which will not be used by bad guys afterwards so uh you cannot build a tool for internet censorship and uh uh be sure that it will never be used to uh basically violate uh digital human rights so exact yeah yeah it's a slippery slope
(26:08) exactly exactly I I have a question on something you said Alec you said you know nobody asked me um I don't need a parent I didn't ask to be to be protected in this um which which sparked something in my mind I've been called by my friends in in just like an anarchist for being such a fan of handshake I say it's censorship resistant but um but selective censorship is is going to be is demanded among some people right like maybe you want to put settings on your phone so your kid is limited or
(26:38) constricted within all sorts of stuff do you think that a VPN provider um can provide like selective censorship as a service right and as a value bad or is that is that just not in the realm of a VPN uh if I just wanted to say I want to have access to everything on a global scale but I would prefer to stay away from anything that has a triple X and domain name is that well yeah yeah yeah uh uh well there is a demand for that I would say uh not sure that it's uh it's a task for web 3.0 uh area uh since uh
(27:11) this like restrictions uh can happen locally on your devic and doesn't require any decentralization or any any blockchain for it uh so um there there is a demand for that we had several requests from uh users coming to our customer support asking if they can somehow uh restrict certain websites for their own kids for example there was a family uh in in Brazil I believe and they used our application and uh uh they had solar dvpn installed on all of the family devices and they asked if they can uh remove uh access to certain uh
(27:47) websites for for the kids on their iPad uh well we don't have that mechanisms uh on on our applications but I believe some of the uh some of the guys who are building on top of a sentinel they probably will have something like that all I think we're at time now but yeah thanks for what you do I know you've been working hard over the years and see you in the Sentinal community and uh appreciate sharing with us today and um I for handshake though maybe we just clarify you you guys do support handshake domain result resolution right
(28:20) I believe for many years yeah so so you get out of the box with Sentinels uh um at the Sentinal level right so by using solar you'll be able to resolve handshake names yeah you will be you will be yeah so it doesn't matter which application you use uh if it's built on top of a sentinel it will support handshake uh the main result great so everybody should check it out yeah like you you share the QR codes the apps um yep there you go again so definitely everybody support this you know if you if support handshake you
(28:54) should download and support give a review or or you know share this to people that need it um right there so thank you yeah thank you guys take care [Music] okay