Sentinel in 2025: A Mega-Preview of the Year to Come

Introduction

2024 is now very much in the rearview mirror. At the midpoint of a chaotic decade, the Web3 world is on the edge of its seat anticipating what could be the biggest bull market ever. What can we expect from Sentinel in what promises to be the most crucial year yet for the blockchain industry?

Last year was a success for Sentinel beyond any of the team, community, or industry's wildest expectations; but some bottlenecks appeared during the latter half of the year. Protracted negotiations took place with the Google Play and Apple App Store teams over application launches; a situation which was further aggravated by Sentinel's code repositories being pilfered by a copycat project.

Those situations have now been rectified, and Sentinel now enters 2025 with renewed vigor and momentum; as well as ample opportunities to make its spectacular 2024 performance seem like just a footnote.

This is evidenced by many developments, including:

• The head-spinning leap in user population on the dVPN network over the holiday season.
• The imminent twofold broadening of the blockchain's capabilities, courtesy of Sentinel Scout.
• The unprecedented scope of the upcoming chain upgrade.
• Active work on expanding the reach of Sentinel's native coin (DVPN) outside of the Cosmos Ecosystem.

But how might Sentinel's 2025 be defined once we're publishing our next "year in review" series this coming December? It will almost certainly be the blockchain's progression from a successful network of consumer dApps into a global peer-to-peer bandwidth marketplace.

That narrative and concept has been kicking around in our coverage since the middle of last year; but it has been part of the team's vision from the very start (as can be seen in the project's original 2018 whitepaper). The next twelve months look to be when it will finally come to fruition.

Core Development

New chain-level features and quality of life improvements for users, service providers, and developers.

Sentinel will start ​off 2025 with a milestone hub upgrade for its sophisticated Cosmos-based blockchain. It will be the first of its kind since 2023, and has been aptly described by the team as the largest in the project's history thus far.

The new version of the blockchain (v12, to be precise) is still being tested by the team and project contributors, but the governance proposal which will fully deploy the upgrade is ready to be fired out to coinholders for voting at a moment's notice.

Hub Upgrade Details

See our accessible summary of the upgrade from December linked below to learn more about the new features and fixes being introduced, and how they'll benefit you; whether you're an ordinary application user, an advanced infrastructure provider, or anything in between.

Sentinel v12 Hub Upgrade: Faster Connections, Easier Subscriptions, and Better Nodes

By Sentinel Independent News (S.I.N.)
Published 21 December 2024

Read on dVPN News

New Official Website

Refreshed blockchain, refreshed website.

The current Sentinel website, which went live in February 2023, portrays Sentinel purely as a dVPN architecture and doesn't convey the range of possibilities offered by the project's blockchain and node networks—an issue exacerbated by the Scout beta and launch process. Frontend services for the blockchain's two major services are also presently segregated into various subdomains.

The new website, which is due in the coming months, will remedy this with an all-in-one dashboard inspired by that of partner project Akash Network. The dashboard will point users toward three primary outcomes (use, earn, and build) and deliver specific Sentinel tools or utilities to them according to their specific needs and locale.

To learn more about the upcoming website, check out our coverage from November, which is linked below.

New Sentinel Website in Development

By Sentinel Independent News (S.I.N.)
Published 25 November,2024

Read Now

Whitepaper & Docs Revision

Sentinel will receive a new whitepaper in 2025, half a decade after its 2020 predecessor was published. Prior to that, the project had one additional lite-paper which was released in 2018.

The drafting of a new whitepaper and substantial revisions to the project's documentation appear to be primarily motivated by the progression towards a peer-to-peer bandwidth marketplace narrative and the impending launch of Scout. However, extensive information related to the dVPN Node Network will also be included, as that infrastructure will be receiving a substantial overhaul in the hub upgrade.

Regardless of these progressions, the 2020 whitepaper contains outdated information and was due for a successor. When it was published, Sentinel was still on its Ethereum testnet chain, preparing to migrate to its current Cosmos-based mainnet.

Sentinel dVPN: Year Eight

How Sentinel will stay true to its roots as it matures into a global bandwidth bazaar.

Based on the network's current consumer adoption trajectory, it is all but certain that Sentinel-powered dVPNs will reach one million all-time users before 2026 arrives.

With the launch of Scout in the coming weeks, the Sentinel blockchain will become multifaceted for the first time. Other new protocols are certain to join the current two pillars in the future, as the team has made it abundantly clear that their ultimate goal is to revolutionize the entire web as we know it.

Does that mean development attention and support will be drawn away from the project's decentralized VPN (dVPN) roots? Absolutely not.

Resource allocation towards dVPN development will only be increased as the new AI protocol brings revenue to the network, according to the core development team. It was also revealed in November that Scout has been largely developed by a new squad of contributors "who are not involved in day-to-day dVPN development."

Based on the network's current consumer adoption trajectory, it is all but certain that Sentinel-powered dVPNs will reach one million all-time users before 2026. The upcoming hub upgrade also contains more quality of life improvements, features, and bugfixes specific to the dVPN protocol than any of its predecessors.

An "application creation wizard" and online portal with resources for developers are also in the works. Those are just two small parts of a much wider effort to bring even more dVPN development teams to Sentinel; and thereby expand the range, diversity, and capabilities of the apps which serve its userbase.

Let's take a closer look at a few of the developments which are coming to the dVPN application network this year:

Applications (A-Z)

Note that this is only a small glimpse at what's coming to the Sentinel dVPN application network within the next twelve months. It's also only a segment of the diverse and ever-expanding applications available to users.

• Sentinel Docs maintains a live directory of all fully-launched (non-beta) dVPN applications running on Sentinel's open source architecture.
• To view and test Sentinel-powered products which are still in their public alpha and beta testing phases, visit the Sentinel Application Testing Forum on Telegram.

For a relatively recent recap of past development during the second half of 2024, see our dVPN application news roundup from last November.

Marketing & Distribution

Application distribution and availability has been singled out as a pressing need for the project and major focus for the team in 2025.

Sentinel Foundation member ProjectAutonomy remarked on its importance as far back as October of last year:

"The product development side is getting very strong and on-point now. Now the next thing we have to work on very seriously is distribution and awareness."

This sentiment was undoubtedly colored by the project's ordeals with app store platforms; but also the pressing need for product marketing, of which the core development team, Growth DAO, and community are all aware in equal measure. Major marketing, advertising, and influencer outreach campaigns are planned for this year from all levels of the project, from the Foundation and Growth DAO down to individual third-party dVPN development teams.

Inroads with the Industry

Over the past few weeks, project insiders have been dropping strong public hints that another centralized (traditional) VPN may be in talks with Sentinel to switch to dVPN architecture.

V2:App became the first cVPN in history to transition to the technology last year—just one of Sentinel's innumerable 2024 feats. It may come as a surprise to many followers of the project, but Sentinel has always aimed to win the VPN ancien régime over with its technology rather than attempting to vanquish it.

One thing that has always set Sentinel apart from the rest of the pack is that dVPN isn't an inferior copy of existing services appended onto a blockchain, as many dApps tend to be. From both a security and backend standpoint, it's fundamentally superior to the centralized VPN architectures which preceded it.

The fact that blockchain is a natural home for VPN technology and not a square peg trying to fit into round hole has opened many doors for the team within the traditional corporate VPN world—which has kept a keen eye on dVPN over the past eight years. Conversely, establishing Sentinel as an important player within the traditional VPN industry is considered a critical long-term objective by the team.

Sentinel Scout & AI

How the project's new protocol could potentially deliver a decentralized data reconnaissance renaissance.

In our 2024 By the Numbers piece, we reviewed statistical data from the project's dVPN network over the course of 2024. The 2025 edition of that article should be twice as long, for one very exciting reason: Scout is coming.

The Sentinel blockchain's second protocol will be fully rolled out in the coming weeks. It promises to bring with it entire swathes of new users and an even heavier workload to the blockchain.

For an overview of what Sentinel Scout is, and how it will be used to collect data for both humans and AI, check out the two pieces which we've published on the protocol:

Scout's Open Source Ethos

Not only will Scout be open source much like its dVPN sibling protocol, a development kit (SDK) for Scout Data Miners is in development.

This SDK, once completed, would allow users of external applications (including dVPN apps) to participate in AI data acquisition. Through this, they will be able to earn Sentinel Coins or exclusive benefits within those apps.

One member of the application network, Independent dVPN, has already confirmed that they will be taking advantage of this. Open the "Independent dVPN" toggle box in the previous section to find out more.

Mining Campaign

In what the team has dubbed a historic first, Sentinel Scout beta testers received incentive payouts from their participation in the distributed bandwidth mining network on 10 January.

Over fifty individuals assisted with testing the smartphone-based nodes since Scout's public testing phase began last July.

An official AI Data Miner Gold Reward program will begin once the protocol goes live. Scout Data Miners earn "gold," which can then be converted into Sentinel Coins. This is a strategy to bring Scout applications in line with app store rules (which are still very unfriendly to crypto).

Akash & Jackal Partnerships

Sentinel's dVPN architecture is highly specialized. There aren't very many ways for it to interact with other blockchains, outside of payment gateways and social cross-promotion. In addition to that, other blockchains simply do not have the raw power required to support Sentinel's dVPN Node Network.

The open-ended, lightweight nature of a data acquisition protocol like Scout has finally provided Sentinel with opportunities to build more tangible partnerships with other projects, after years of relatively minor collaborations and integrations.

"There is going to be some pretty surprising stuff, big partnerships and individuals endorsing Sentinel [at a large scale]," a team member remarked in November.

Sentinel haven't just partnered with fellow Cosmos projects Akash Network and Jackal Protocol for Scout; they've made their services integral to the protocol's functionality, and posited the three blockchains as a sort of DePIN triumvirate: Sentinel for bandwidth, Akash for cloud computing and GPU power, and Jackal for cloud storage.

AI Agents

AI agents are growing in popularity by the day, and Sentinel has plans which could potentially make the chain an invaluable resource to their developers.

A Sentinel team member announced earlier this month that Scout will be integrated with ElizaOS's ai16z; and presumably many more models if the effort proves successful.

ElizaOS is an open source platform for building and deploying autonomous AI agents across various applications. It supports multiple AI models and has integrations with Web3 tools. The platform recently developed ai16z, which is a Solana-based venture capital DAO operated entirely by AI agents.

The Foundation has also outlined some of the specifics on how Scout will assist with training. What they propose goes far beyond simply providing a Sentinel-branded facsimile of existing data acquisition methods for agents: Instead of the standard practice of training (being fed data) before deployment, Scout-powered agents will be capable of training themselves in real time.

To find out more about how this real-time training process will work, click to open the toggle box below.

The integration also represents another step forward in establishing a presence for Sentinel within the Solana Ecosystem. More information on that initiative can be found in the Sentinel Coin section later in the article.

The Growth DAO in 2025

The community-driven arm of Sentinel continues to expand the ecosystem's reach and offerings.

The Sentinel Growth DAO has been crystal clear about its goals for the coming year, which have already been compiled and submitted for community review in the run-up to the organization's next round of funding.

2024 was the DAO's first full year of operation, and during that span it established itself as a crucial driving force for the project's future. Applications, infrastructure, social platforms, talented new contributors, websites, marketing efforts, a return to the Cosmoverse, and community events such as poker nights are just some of the initiatives spearheaded by the Foundation-endorsed collective.

As with any section of this article, the following represents only a portion of what the DAO will attempt to accomplish this year, as nobody can foresee what opportunities will arise over a timespan that large. This list also only encompasses new initiatives—many existing ones which began last year are also continuing into 2025.

We will be publishing an article in the coming weeks detailing the contributions that the Growth DAO has made to the Sentinel Ecosystem during its existence.

[Disclosure: dVPN News is funded and operated by the DAO.]

The Sentinel Coin

How the blockchain's native digital asset can meet the high expectations in the coming bull market.

"2025 is the year of dVPN revenue focus."

While the Sentinel Coin (DVPN) had an enviable 2024, team members and investors have expressed hope that its market performance in 2025 will better reflect the massive progress made on the development and user adoption fronts than it did last year.

"It is frustrating at times to feel that inability to hold the price levels that the community deserves, regardless of the number of updates and releases—but the intensity of the fight and the amount of work getting done on a daily basis only grows stronger when compared to even one, six, or twelve months ago," remarked Foundation member ProjectAutonomy last October in characteristically earnest fashion.

The core development team has strived to show coinholders that they take the success of the project's coin, which is crucial to the functionality of the blockchain itself, very seriously. 2025 will see a concerted effort to expand the reach of DVPN into entirely new regions of the crypto world—and also retread familiar ground.

Building Bridges

Sentinel's blockchain will remain firmly in the Cosmos Ecosystem where it belongs, but its coin will become far more itinerant. The team has announced that the asset will be returning to its birthplace for the first time in nearly four years, in the form of a bridge to Ethereum.

A DVPN liquidity pool will be created on Uniswap and seeded by the team. Many Sentinel community veterans will fondly remember the decentralized exchange (DEX) as the main hub for "SENT" trading before mainnet was launched and a new ticker moniker was adopted in 2021.

The coin will also be arriving on the wildly popular Solana Ecosystem, though specifics about which exchanges will receive liquidity pools there haven't yet been publicly shared.

Liquidity and trading volume from those ecosystems (with potentially more to come) won't just give the Sentinel Coin a massive boost from a price and market capitalization perspective—it will also grant Sentinel access to marketing and influencers outside of the Cosmos Ecosystem, and thereby benefit consumer adoption as well.

CEX Listings

Any seasoned crypto trader knows that centralized exchanges (CEXs) are where the bulk of liquidity and volume reside within the market. Listings have been in high demand from DVPN holders, and the project is poised to pursue them in 2025.

Listings on major CEXs are difficult to obtain, and often carry costs with them. During 2024 Sentinel opted to strategically delay these attempts until its current roster of products were fully launched and fine-tuned.

Dubai-based Bybit and Cayman Islands-based Gate.io have been named by the team as their top targets for DVPN CEX listings in 2025.

A Sentinel Foundation member also surprised the community in December with the news that MEXC has approached them about potentially re-listing the Sentinel Coin. DVPN was previously traded on MEXC early in the decade, but was de-listed during the icy 2022 bear market. From that point onwards, KuCoin has been the only major CEX the coin has been traded on.

Inflation Reduction

Sentinel Proposal 55, the first governance measure of the year, is currently in its voting period as of this article's publication. If passed, this proposal would adjust the inflation parameters of the Sentinel Coin to cap the maximum rate at 10%, and lower the minimum rate to 7%.

At present, the inflation parameters are a maximum of 15% and a minimum of 7%, The last governance proposal to reduce coin inflation (#28) was passed with 92% approval in July 2023.

Voting on Proposal 55 will conclude on 22 January.

More Year in Review Coverage

This is the fifth and final installment of our special series of articles wrapping up 2024.

Our first 2024 year in review article, Sentinel in the Media, was published in November. It contains every media appearance (interviews, panel discussions, speeches, and more) that important figures within the project have made over the year.

The second article in the series, A Timeline of Sentinel in 2024, provides dozens of accessible bite-size highlights from across the ecosystem during the course of that monumental year.

The third article, Sentinel by the Numbers, breaks down the statistical growth of the project's dVPN network, applications; in addition to the Sentinel Coin and governance.

The fourth article is a collection of our best stories from 2024, and a glance at the contributors whose work powered dVPN News through its first year.

The