Since 2017, a Cosmos-based project called Sentinel has been developing a decentralized VPN (dVPN) solution, allowing users to connect to the Internet in a truly anonymous manner.
More recently, the team at Sentinel has been working on adding another exciting feature - permissionless data scraping for AI agents - to their existing network.
To reflect the broader scope of the project, Sentinel is planning to change their ticker from $DVPN to $P2P, emphasizing its evolution into “The Layer 1 for P2P Bandwidth.”
We will briefly cover both of these developments in today's post.
dVPN vs Centralized VPN
First of all, what advantage does a decentralized VPN offer over a centralized alternative?
Despite their privacy policies, centralized VPN providers often track you, log your data, and report you, depending on the jurisdiction where the relays are located. Sentinel's dVPN platform protects users from these risks. According to Sentinel's X post:
The dVPN app built on Sentinel has verifiable end-to-end encryption, and even the process of identifying nodes and authorizing the connection to the node happens on-chain without additional servers.
In Sentinel's network, decentralized bandwidth providers (relays) are paid in the DVPN token for providing users with anonymous access to the Internet. On the demand-side, users pay for dVPN service with the DVPN token.
As a Sentinel relay, you can now lend your bandwidth to AI agents for data scraping, in addition to dVPN users.
Sentinel Scout
Companies like OpenAI scrape data from the Internet in order to train their Large Language Models (LLMs), such as the one used by ChatGPT.
This massive dataset is what allows the chatbot to provide you with relevant and comprehensive answers. The problem is, what if you need to incorporate real-time data into the chatbot's responses?
That's where Sentinel Scout comes in.
Sentinel Scout is a scalable, permissionless solution for AI agents to fetch and process web data without relying on centralized infrastructure.
An AI agent can intelligently search for and train itself on data scraped from Sentinel Scout in order to answer a question that it previously didn't have the correct data for.
If you are interested in learning more about how an AI agent workflow is created and connected to the Sentinel Scout APIs, check out this video tutorial.
Partnerships
Sentinel has teamed up with other Cosmos-based projects to extend its functionality:
- Decentralized storage provider Jackal will be leveraged to store scraped data.
- Akash will provide decentralized compute to the Cosmos AI ecosystem.
- Sentinel offers an easy-to-use data scraping solution to decentralized AI Agent ecosystem Fetch.ai.
DVPN Ticker Change
To reflect the project's expanded scope, the network's token will be renamed from DVPN to P2P. From Sentinel's X account:
Sentinel is changing its ticker to $P2P from $DVPN, to underscore the shift in narrative from dVPN alone to 'The Layer 1 for P2P bandwidth'.
- Users can provide their bandwidth for either AI data scraping or dVPN services and earn $P2P.
- $P2P stakers earn revenue from both dVPN and AI data layer p2p bandwidth exchange.
- Developers can use $P2P to pay bandwidth providers and build on top of their services.
The DVPN token is currently listed on the Osmosis exchange.
Until next time...
Encompassing a combination of decentralized AI agents, bandwidth, and storage, there is a lot here to wrap your head around when it comes to Sentinel's new data scraping feature for AI agents.
Despite the complexities, the future of AI in the Cosmos ecosystem is looking very promising, especially considering Sentinel's recent innovations. This project is definitely worth keeping an eye on as we move into a decentralized, AI-powered future.
If you learned something new from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the Hive blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.
Further Reading
- Three Rapidly Growing DePIN Projects In The Cosmos Ecosystem
- Why Jackal Vault Is More Confidential And Secure Than iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox
Sources
N8N AI Agents [1]
Data Scout Tutorial [2]
Medium Article About Ticker Change [3]