LN⚡️VPN - Pitch Presentation
LNVPN - A lightning only, privacy focused VPN provider
With LNVPN we've build a very simple VPN pay-as-you-go service paid via Bitcoin Lightning. Instead of paying around 5$ every month with your credit card for the privilege of being able to use a VPN service every now and then we provide you with a VPN connection on servers in different countries for one hour for only 10 cents in US$ -- paid via ⚡! You don't need an account, credit card or email address.
No Email - No account - No credit card - No KYC - No phone number - No bullshit
tl;dr Here is a demo/pitch video: https://lightning.video/af9b336f1d031c5db63d5bafb5be0c69cc1e0530afcba50130fe4803bc16f6c8
Problems & Solutions 🚨
Many people in Africa don't have the privilege of a PayPal account or credit card, so they are not able to pay for privacy tools like VPNs. Many services in the western world are only available with a IP address from the US, Europe or similar developed countries. This is not fair! That is why we built LNVPN. All you need is a smartphone with a Lightning wallet and about 10 cents in US dollar.
How was it built? 🛠
We built a frontend with React which is now already forked by other projects. Our backend is made with NodeJS. Check out more here: https://github.com/LightRider5/lnvpn
For the VPN connection we use the Wireguard protocol. https://www.wireguard.com/
For every VPN endpoint we rent a server in a corresponding country. We install a wireguard API on each server. Your private key is not stored on our backend.
https://github.com/Mawthuq-Software/Wireguard-Manager-and-API
Blockers & Issues ✋
We had some issues connecting Front and Backend. As we don't have a database or anything similar to store user data we need to handle everything within the users browser. Keys are generated only within the browser. So it was difficult to keep the session between frontend and backend when the user has paid the invoice but closes the browser window. We managed to solve the problem with websockets.
Next Steps:
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Clean up code!
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Adding African endpoints
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Providing an API for everyone
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Adding WebLN
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Adding an Uptime Site