podcasts
Obscura VPN uses a two-hop relay system and Lightning payments to eliminate tracking, making it the first trustless VPN.
Obscura VPN, created by Carl Dong, addresses a fundamental flaw in traditional VPNs: users must trust providers not to log or leak their data. Acting as a "man in the middle," VPNs can see both a user’s IP address and browsing activity, making them vulnerable to breaches. Inspired by Apple’s iCloud Private Relay, Obscura splits user traffic between two independent hops—one knows the user's identity but not their activity, while the other sees destination traffic without knowing the user. This ensures no single entity can track users. To enhance privacy further, Obscura integrates Bitcoin’s Lightning Network for anonymous payments, removing the need for credit cards that create a paper trail. Additionally, by leveraging HTTP/3 and QUIC, Obscura makes VPN traffic harder to detect and block, making it a powerful tool against censorship. Dong sees this as the future of VPNs—eliminating trust, increasing transparency, and integrating decentralized payments to redefine online privacy.
Carl Dong’s podcast highlights the flaws in traditional VPNs and presents Obscura as a groundbreaking alternative. By using a two-hop relay system, Bitcoin payments, and modern internet protocols, Obscura removes the need for trust while enhancing privacy and censorship resistance. As online freedoms face growing threats, tools like Obscura will be crucial in preserving an open internet, marking a fundamental shift in digital privacy.
0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Solving private VPN payments
6:04 - Explaining VPN hops
12:55 - Fold & Bitkey
14:50 - Censorship game theory
22:29 - VPNs more usable in restricted environs
27:26 - New generation of trustless VPNs
37:15 - User data is a toxic liability
41:32 - New possibilities for internet freedom
50:43 - Obscura's long-term vision
(00:00) the biggest flaw right now that I see is that they act as your primary man in the middle they see both your personal information as in like your connecting IP and billing information and the credit card information and your browsing history they can still suffer a security breach and be compromised and have that data be leaked users personal data is toxic waste to us nobody has both pieces of the puzzle let's say to identify you or de anonymize you or for the data to be leaked or or anything else these are VPN services that don't
(00:38) rely on trust for privacy and are also hard to block and hard to detect while maintaining good performance Carl dong welcome back to the show glad to be here Marty it's fantastic to be back yeah last time was um back in New York in in Williamsburg right that was was a long time ago I I remember you brought some bruise in and we had a l beer it was great talking about uh reproducible Builds on bitcoin and Geeks a project that you worked on for for quite some time thank you for that of course of course I mean it was it was a pleasure I
(01:23) mean everything I'm very lucky that everything I work on is like an obsession of mine you know so it really doesn't feel like hard work at all it just feels like I am chasing this rabbit hole that I would have otherwise um been chasing it anyway so no well you've been uh working on something else which we here to talk about today obscura VPN which no 100% I mean um it's been a it's been a wild wild ride I think we announced it um around the end of last year well I guess we're in 2025 now so so the end of 2023 um and I've been working on it
(02:08) since then it's sort of been an idea that's been ruminating at the back of my head I I I don't know well the audience probably doesn't know you know I I lived um when I was a kid back in London for a few years um and then I moved back to Shanghai with my parents and that's sort of when the Great firewall came up all that you know blocking of Google and Wikipedia and YouTube and everything so I I've been using vpns and like building it out and and testing different protocols since I was a kid so it's always been at the back of my head that
(02:42) like okay like these protocols probably need a refresh like the tooling probably needs a refresh um and so that I I guess that all culminated in that I'm I'm happy to sort of go into more of what obscure is and everything else yeah because I think before before you announced obscura in late 2023 you had written uh a script or a library that made it very easy to top up mulad subscriptions with lightning yeah that correct was it mulvad or ivpn no exactly it was it was exactly mulad um I think this was back in 2020
(03:20) this was one of our one of my like you know pandemic weekend projects I want to say um and it was it was really great because you know at the time and and this sort of speaks to how you know Visionary um mulvad was and still is um you know I had just not seen a uh a VPN company that did what they did which was um do the anonymous user number thing right that that was that was ingenious like why do you you you really just need me to pay right I get that right like you know you need to R service and whatever you just need to get me to pay
(04:02) why do you need my email address like you know just generate a random number I perfectly I'm an adult perfectly able to keep a random number somewhere safely um and then pay using Bitcoin or whatever um and then I have my VPN like that that is like sort of the perfect flow and and it was one of those moments where I was like okay actually um vpns are sort of one of the perfect things uh for for you to pay with Bitcoin for right because like that payment information is basically the only part of the personally identify
(04:40) information that they have about you so you want it to be um somewhat pseudonymous somewhat Unstoppable um and things like that and I was like okay they don't accept lightning yet um because you know integrating lightning back then as a vendor was was was you know uh still quite a pain and so I was like you know what I'm just just going to I just literally emailed uh I don't know if it was their support or I directly emailed their CTO but but but I got got got through to them and the guy was like let's email over pgp encrypted
(05:14) email and then we got this deal done where I was able to like buy their vouchers and resell them for lightning and that was that was a great experience it was just like a weekend python script that I wrote it was uh really fun yeah no it was fun again going back to privacy like you're using vpm why do you want to use it for privacy as you're prising the internet and that payment um historically whether it was via credit card or debit card is a leaky hole in in the boat of privacy which can which can get back to you and
(05:46) so the sender privacy that is afforded on Lightning makes a lot of sense it's like okay obviously receiving privacy is not Ironclad um or easy to get to Ironclad but Center you a lot of sender privacy on Lightning so adding that and was that hackathon that weekend project was that something that set off an idea like okay maybe I should go work on my own VPN and build obscure yeah yeah kind I I I think it was I mean I've I've always been um looking at it and and you're absolutely right about that dichotomy of like you
(06:24) know sender privacy and uh receiver privacy and lightning sender privacy is much more strong and I also thought that um you know with with VPN Services you aren't these aren't like I don't know like $50 transactions right these are like you know um you know $10 at most let's say right and so it made all the more sense to do it over lightning um rather than the base chain because otherwise it'll just be um eaten up by fees um I think I think what really prompted everything was when I went down a deep rabbit hole with
(07:10) um uh looking at right I I was I was at I was at pubkey I I still remember this I was at Pub Key um and I was um chatting with Matt Caro and he W and I was like exploring various ways to do different vpm protocols and everything back then there's like this this concept of a performance enhancing proxy um which like which makes it such that even though you're adding another hop you can often times even improve the performance uh of the overall Connection by sort of like terminating it in the middle which helps with the TCP retransmission
(07:50) algorithm um but anyway sorry I can go down too many rabbit holes you got to stop me sometimes um the um what Matt was saying was to look at how Apple did their iCloud relay protocol and I hadn't thought of it because I was like okay it's it's Apple it's an iCloud relay it sounds very like brandy and markety there's probably nothing there um but he was I actually look into it and I looked into it um and I was just sort of Blown Away by how almost how ingenious sort of the the the the scheme was I mean the a major part
(08:29) of the tee is um this concept of you know having um two separate parties um be your sort of vpm Provider rather than one party right so okay maybe we should we should back up sort of a little bit in sort of how vpns um work a little bit right like the the biggest flaw right now that I see right in existing VPN in terms of privacy and everything else is that they they act as your primary man in the middle um they see both your personal information as in like your your connecting IP and you were talking about all the billing information and the
(09:14) credit card information and whatever and your browsing history now actually you know if you're technical you're like well isn't my you know connection secured by TLS or https or anything like that um yes but there is metadata let's say that is in plain Tex very specifically um you should look at tls's Sni extension um and this was like this was introduced back in H I think the '90s it was was it was the ' 90s or the oos such that let's say one guy let's say cloud flare can host websites for like hundreds of different websites of
(09:56) whatever right um but what it really does is it just you know it just puts whatever website you're going to in plain text for everybody to see including like your ISP or your vpm provider uh or or whatever and I mean like you know isps since um the 2017 repeal of ISP privacy laws um they've been able to sell that data or like personally sensitive data um to Brokers without your permission which is like I'm that that's kind of crazy to me um but anyway so so I think that's sort of a problem in that they're the only men
(10:37) in the middle um and so users really have to trust when these providers say that okay your data is not logged you know we don't keep any you know we don't persist any of the this information that that you give us right but let's say a provider is actually trustworthy right they keep to their pinky promise um they can still suffer a security breach and be compromised and have that data be leaked right this is this is sort of why um people who are privacy conscious people who sort of understand how networking protocols work and how this
(11:13) data gets shuttled around are actually starting to tell people like hey like stop using a VPN right and I I I I saw that as a huge problem let's say for the for the industry and also you know there are certain benefits to VPN that we still want to keep you know without some of the others so what Apple iCloud relay did was actually quite neat um they simply said okay instead of having one person as your uh sort of man in the middle that sees who you are and sort of where you're going let's have two people two independent parties um as hops right
(11:52) and so you the first hop you connect to your first hop who knows who you are because you know you're paying them and and everything else but they can't see any of your traffic um they just know your personal information and that you're connecting somewhere right everything gets encrypt is still encrypted and then you have the second independent hop that has no idea who you are they just know that it's you know one of a thousand users coming from a first hop and they actually reach out to that internet um and you know see your
(12:25) IP packets that are but but these IP packets are completely attributable to you so that basically splits who you are from what you're doing and this was really simple yet effective um and just solves the the the problem of privacy and you know being the only man in the middle in in quite a be beautiful way it's sort of like tour light almost right tour has this option called hidden surfaces single hop and this is basically um what it is sup freaks this is that you don't want to skip because fold has a great offer for you everyone
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(14:57) sometimes here at the Commons in Austin as well well so I know it's Bitcoin on the bleeding edge of distributed bleeding edge the bleeding edge 100% we can't figure out Wi-Fi I I think this is this is totally not not a not a sponsorship but I have had good experience with UniFi gear and that's that's all I've had good experiences with all the other vendors are like you know unify gear but I think we lost you you were explaining uh Apple's iCloud sort of relay system and you're at the point where you were just describing the
(15:30) fact that you hop between two independent actors and that sort of uh masquerades the the Inception point of the data transmission yeah no 100% I mean basically what you do is you know you're the user you your packets flow through the first hop and then to the second hop and to the internet right and so what that basically does is the first hop knows who you are but doesn't know any of your traffic and the second hop has no idea who you are uh and relays your traffic right so this splits that information between those two and so
(16:06) nobody has sort of both pieces of the puzzle let's say um to uh identify you or de anonymize you or for the data to be leaked or or anything else um and this is this is really you know simple yet effective easily Deployable um and you know sort of the Simplicity of it all is why uh you know at the ietf which is s of the the the body that um makes all the new internet standards um you know like HTTP DNS all the all the good things that we know um they started a working group um which is sort of their well it's a working group I I guess it's
(16:49) self-explanatory what a working group it's it's a group that works on stuff um they formed a working group to standardize a version of this um on top of um htb3 um so yeah I I got I got really into that idea and looked into it um it's a really solid idea uh and well there's there's also another part of this idea that that that also came into play that that got me really uh riled up as well so like I I I was I was talking about how they standardized this on top of um HTTP 3 right and and at the beginning I was like okay HTTP so H so
(17:32) the HTTP protocol has sort of been through several iterations we had you know 0.9 was very popular I think 1.1 was quite popular um and then 2.0 came about and was quite popular uh and and and HTTP 3 um was somewhat new um and I I was just thinking okay all right they're just going to do it on top of hcp3 because you know this is the new thing and like you know everybody's trying to standardize around this new protocol and everything else um but actually that decision um was also really ingenious and I realize this from you know
(18:10) thinking back to the days um you know when when when I was you know eight eight a teenager back in Shanghai trying to get around the great firewall right and so the great firewall blocked all of these sites like Wikipedia Google YouTube all these things that I that I needed to use um and you know I tried a lot of commercial options they were you know not that reliable I try to set up my own things with sort of um off-the-shelf protocols that everybody knew like openvpn strong Swan and sort of later wire guard and they were like
(18:49) swiftly detected and blocked like it would work for a day and then tomorrow morning I would wake up and like it's gone basically um but what what what sort of sprung out of that was you know these this is like a lot of developers who are just basically locked behind a a wall now and you know plenty of them are network protocol engineers and so um sprung up where like Technologies and and these are these are just all just proper noun barrages like v2ray Meek Shadow socks and uh more recently hysteria 2 I know naming is the
(19:26) hardest thing in uh one of the hardest things that in software engineering right um but so so but Bey Beyond these names let's say uh they had like a common theme to them right and the common theme amongst all of these newer options that were let's say uh more reliable let's say uh to to get around the great firewall was this idea that's sort of part of the like part of the lingo of the internet freedom and and everything else uh this idea of collateral Freedom um and more importantly collateral Freedom via obfuscation so it it you have to sort of
(20:11) wrap your head around the game theory of like internet sensorship and people who want to you know block uh block things right um internet sensors and and sometimes overzealous Network admins that we have here right like you know Cisco has sold the same Tech that they sold to the Chinese government to let's say uh to to everybody to to you know airports and hotels and whatever right it's sort of like and network admins I'm I'm sorry to to to rag on network admins sometimes they're just like they don't know they're like oh we're under attack
(20:47) like what is the Cisco Advanced protection thing let's let's let's tick that box maybe they'll help I don't know right um you know they they these these Network admins they generally still want permitted traffic to go through right they don't want their employees not to be able to access you know whatever thing that they want to access um so they want permitted traffic to go through so what is your play here your play here is that if on The Wire like at the protocol level if you can blend in and look like regular internet traffic
(21:24) right by mimicking HTTP um then you're more likely to avoid being detected and blocked and and sort of flow through right and so that was um that was the you know one of the the the important insights in that and and sort of why they used um HTTP 3 is that you know it allows you to blend in with regular internet traffic um and HTTP 3 unlike http2 doesn't suffer from um this is a sort of a a a a technical term called TCP over TCP meltdown um whereby you know some VPN you you'll you'll feel that they get stuttery um as in like you
(22:10) know if there's any packet loss it recovers really slowly and it stutters and and things sort of Jump Around uh that TCP over TCP meltdown is basically um what you're feeling there and so that was also another part of it that I felt was um really really ingenious I mean uh to to to sort of take it a step back and think about okay what does this mean let's say for someone who is using a VPN like that right um what it means is that in the places where normally you know your other vpns won't work let's say at an airport at a hotel in certain nation
(22:51) states or you know in even on some campuses I remember I remember trying to use YouTube TV right right right exactly L all like places like if you're in a network environment that's restrictive um now uh it's way more likely that your vpn's going to work it's way harder for them to detect and block your VPN connection because honestly a lot of a lot of the time unless you're in a like an authoritarian country or whatever right um they're not actually trying to like they don't actually have they're not actually
(23:25) actively trying to block you um the network admins are just a little overzealous and just turn just just ticked something that they didn't really fully understand what they were doing anyway so that's what's really happening a lot of the time yeah it's the because I I don't I'll be hand up here don't follow the interworkings and the iterations of the lower levels of the Internet Protocol but it is very encouraging that a company like apple will create this relay and then the people people working on HTTP will recognize it and say hey
(24:01) maybe we should implement this to make it 100% better to use so the the fact that the open internet still has somewhat of a cypherpunk sort of Tilt at its core to enable the free distribution of of data and information is highly encouraging no 100% I mean it's um because I I feel like you know a lot of it is sort of um unspoken right like because you know the ietf is supposed to be somewhat of a neutral you know organization and everything else right and and and um you know but these are these are these are nerds you know these are like people who
(24:42) are just like we want the we want freedom and we want you know these things to happen and and so when they see a good thing they they know where to take out I was actually um so like when I saw all of this right I was like okay all right like let me like I'm someone who doesn't really understand anything until I've like coded it up so I like I literally I like implemented one of the uh RFC so rfcs are like basically like bips in in in you know internet land um and you know I implemented in Rust and then I implemented in go just to like fully
(25:16) understand what was going on um and then I you know I wasn't really I I requested a waiver to go to ietf and was actually invited and I went to the working group and met with the people there they are so gracious with their stuff and you know they they were they they told me crazy stuff of like um this uh this guy because because it's not just apple right this is a working group with people from you know Apple Cloud Flur Google fastly um you know you name it that anybody who's in networking who's who's sort of higher up at the protocol
(25:54) design level were there um they were telling me their crazy battles with um you know their their technical term for it was like middle boxes right which is basically like sort of your ISP and whatever right like their crazy battles with middle boxes and how they you know um introduce things in the protocol to just like make the middle boxes like a little confused and a little you know throw them off their game or whatever and it good time it's definitely a good time and yeah the iatf is a great um great Organization for sure yeah this
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(27:19) going up make sure you're protecting it the right way make sure you have a good partner that is unchain go to unchain dcom tftc bring it back to obscura and how it compares to incumbent VPN providers I think you mentioned it in the beginning but that's one thing where it's mulvad or ivpn which are the providers that I've sort of trusted uh throughout the years it is this Pinky Promise as as you said and as you mark it on your website that uh it's really don't it's trust don't verify because you can't verify you just have the trust that they
(27:56) deleting the data but because of the technical um sort of uh functionalities that have been opened up with this relay system on HTTP 3 it seems like you can actually um you can actually have more confidence that data isn't being logged and obscure doesn't have the ability to to do it in the first exactly yeah exactly it's it's it's sort of like you know uh what's better than not logging can't log right like it's it's it's you you don't we don't have to trust um our word for it like you know we have our source code on GitHub so to to bring it
(28:35) to high like the the you know I was just talking about the two advances right like the two pop relay architecture right and sort of it being based on HTTP and quick and and reliable transport and all those and obviously you know we've put our own spin on those too and and how we implemented it I what I what my understanding was was that these are the ingredients for for a new generation of VPN Services right and these VPN services are going to be different these are VPN services that like don't rely on trust for privacy as I was saying before
(29:10) and are also hard to block and hard to detect um while maintaining good performance right and actually so with our two-party setup as we were talking about we need two independent parties right um we operate the first top and we're actually very how to partner with mulat which we see as one of the U most trustworthy VPN providers out there um to operate the second hop right and or or what we call the exit hop and so we are completely independent companies we don't share keys with each other or or whatever um and so your your internet
(29:50) you know data is split between these two hops um and for for up fisc for you know getting around these Network filters and firewalls and all those things um we do exactly what I was saying was you know we we tunnel these packets over um quick or uh which is sort of the the basis of HTTP 3 which gives us the benefit of you know being hard to detect or block as in it'll work in places where your VPN has failed to work before um and and this this this you know as I was saying before this this came from years of my fights and Duels with
(30:27) the with the great firewall trying to get around it and and understanding sort of like what is cuz I think um one of the one of the interesting Dynamics I want to say is that uh for cryp for you know cryptographers and people who work on networking protocols um in sort of uh uh let's say the first world or or or places where let's say internet censorship is like not here and now um they like to make sure that the cryptography is right and and and make sure that you know um everything is perfectly blind and everything else and
(31:08) I I that that's that's a really worthy goal um but in a practical sense um you know sometimes um for Network filters let's say like any a network admin at whatever right there're they they've got a very simple mindset they're like this traffic look looks too random or this traffic is too well protected or doesn't look like HTTP I'm just going to stop it like I don't I don't care what your you know encryption whatever I'm just G to like you're you're You're gone um so it's it's an interesting Dynamic uh to explore let's say um but yes so you know
(31:50) to to take it back you know our wire guard packets are you know your wire guard packets you know perhaps some of your listeners have have heard about wire guard and how it's a great protocol and it it was it it it is it still remains one of the greatest protocols um uh and the wiard packets are endtoend encrypted from the user to molad servers so we as the second hop we never see any of your plain text information not even the Sni metadata that I was talking about right um and with sort of you know quick and HTTP 3s unreliable transport
(32:28) we made it really hard for you know Network admins to block that first hop from the user to us to obscura we made it really hard to block um and we've done it without sacrificing uh performance across the board um and yeah and and you know we take people's trust um very seriously you know you you know our last conversation with about me working on bitcoin cor is build system and everything else right um and so trust is always on on my mind um we want to be we want to be trustworthy but we also want to minimize the amount of
(33:04) trust that anybody has to uh place in us and so our entire source code is on GitHub for people to see um and you know me you know we're working on reproducible builds and we'll we'll we'll roll them out for for people so people can verify yeah no it's very exciting because it seems just having followed the project since you announced it and um getting access to the website before you launch look at how you guys are marketing it I think kud is on the design the name naming is hard I think obscure is an incredible name for a VPN
(33:40) product and I think the way in which you guys communicate how you're differentiated uh compared to other vpns is is very clear and understandable on the website and I guess that's the question I have do you obviously you're partnering with mulab to be that exit hop and you think this will become quickly become a standard in the VPN World once it's launched I I believe so I I think there's going to be let's say I think that this is what the next generation of VPN providers are going to look like um I think that there is a a a
(34:21) a a crisis of confidence almost in you know existing uh V PPM providers I don't think that that is the case for providers like mulvad who have like proven time and time again let's say that they are trustworthy you know removing subscription all those things but I think for the rest of the industry there's sort of a crisis of confidence because I mean I I I think what what's happened right is that like you know you've got these companies um there's growing scrutiny there was like recently a like a government document telling
(34:56) people not to use consumer vpns um they've sort of flooded YouTube if you're ever on YouTube it's like you know they've flooded YouTube with all these ads and exaggerated claims and scare tactics to who like you know to to someone who's like like a like someone who like knows the the low-level networking stuff I'm like that you're stretching it a little bit like you're stretching it a little bit what what you're saying um and even you know even after users sign up they have all these predatory pricing strategies where it's
(35:29) like really cheap the first year and then they jack up the price for the next year and you're just paying insane amounts and and you know even behind the scenes these companies are um there there's this interesting graph I think it was windscribe that made the made the graph there's an interesting website that they put up um of the VPN ownership map um and it turns out these vpns are like a lot of the these companies are what I call like the many headed hydras let's say um these are these are basically a a graph of vpm providers
(36:08) that are all owned by a parent company like uh you know zif Davis or or or Cape or or one of these um and it's it's it's questionable ownership right um and often times when they're part of sort of these conglomerates you know they use the other arms of their hydras to AstroTurf a little bit right like let's get on that top xvpn of 2015 25 list or let's get on whatever and I look at these lists and all I all I'm looking for is like is mulad there like if if mad's like not on one of those lists or not on the radar of these lists I'm like
(36:49) come on like this is just not a serious um kind of a thing so this is I'm sort of describing this crisis of confidence right but I I I think sort of the next generation of VPN Services really has to address um you know the original sin that say of of VPN services and and sort of this privacy and Trust problem uh and I really think this is what what it's going to look like and I'm really excited for it yeah I mean bringing don't trust verify to the vpm world is extremely exciting and I think you're um being a bit bit polite to the
(37:23) competitive landscape by not naming names but like companies like expressvpn and others who are uh deploying millions of dollars of ads on very popular podcast with questionable um um security and uh particularly um of data of user data and from what I understand a lot of these companies as you mentioned earlier are are selling data to third parties to to juice their revenues and I think it's important um if you care about privacy and uh maybe not even care about it but need it depending on where you are in
(37:59) the world and what you're doing uh being able to verify that this isn't being logged you're not being tracked and you can't be tracked is very important 100% um and I I you know I I think it's I have a few thoughts there let me make sure I touched on everyone the um you know I I I don't like to um sort of um name too many names mostly because um I think that this should be an um maybe I'm too naive but I think this should be an industrywide um sort of effort right um I think that like there's a chance for this industry um to
(38:41) be elevated as in okay you guys aren't doing this today um you could be doing this tomorrow right like you could improve we could make this industry um a a better place and so I I hope that you know these providers um maybe come up with their own schemes maybe to come up with you know Innovations you know it's it's it's it's not a um it's not a you know I when you lose kind of situation it's an industry that we can all um improve upon and I hope that um I hope that we do um yeah uh right yeah sorry for putting out the spot through a
(39:19) little but the um this is great and obviously I mean as it pertains to the audience of this podcast going back to what we discussed earli you have the ability to pay privately via lightning as well yeah um which is important oh 100% that that's super um that's super important to us um I think our stance um let's say um and not to not not to dwell too much on the on the Privacy part uh once more but it's um you know I think there there's this good stance to take which is that like users personal data is toxic waste to us like
(40:03) we we want we want our service to be as convenient as possible Right but where possible we don't want your data we do not want to you know store anything or whatever it is toxic waste to us um we wouldn't know what to do with it uh and so when when it comes to Technologies like lightning where you know we we really don't have to store anything other than you know a proof um we're very happy to implement that you know obviously you know I've I've I've been I I've worked on bcoin core and and big fan of lightning and everything else um
(40:38) and uh and actually um um my wife uh uh Val uh works on LDK and so she keeps me a breast of the you know uh the the developments and and everything else and uh it's it's been really great um yeah and I I I do want to point out that you know other than um the Privacy aspects of obscura right we really care about the usability of our product and that's that's seen let's say in in our Mac OS app where we've tried to make every single user flow as as smooth as possible um but also in that you know I was talking about before um this is a
(41:19) VPN that will work in places where other VPN um vpns didn't right um so even if you didn't care about the privacy um we've got your back and we we have improvements yeah what do you think this does now that this product hits the market not not only for the VPN space but for just Freedom generally on the internet you think this opens up new possibilities in terms of what people can work on and what they can get done without having to sacrifice privacy speed whatever it may be yeah I mean I think in general you know everybody uses their
(42:01) VPN for different reasons I'm not going to speculate on what um but I I think a a general sense that I keep hearing um from you know the the the users who've been sort of beta testing our product is that like um they turn it on and because you know all we've optimized all of our protocols and everything works smoothly they almost forget that it's there um but they feel safe they feel that you know they are protected uh and that they could you know be free let's say and and speak freely and browse freely let's say um on
(42:40) the internet without worrying about if their you know ISP is looking at what they're doing or like you know their boss knows that they're on on on Reddit you know at 2 p.m or or something like that or uh things like that right and I I really believe that you know the internet is our digital Commons right I I I would dare I would venture to say our glorious digital Commons um it deserves to be open and private that is our mission at obscure right to make the internet open and private by default um and I think in a larger sense um
(43:25) politicians are always going to try to erode our freedoms online right we I I think you know the American Constitution gave the American people great rights in sort of the physical landscape because that that that was basically all all there was back then right and with this new digital landscape I think politicians are trying to erode our freedoms online um and we really have the duty um as technologists to wield our our skill and our our you know programming skills and what whatever to defend our rights in
(44:01) this digital space um and so you know that that's sort of part of the reason why I I I I love working on stuff like you know Bitcoin and and and uh vpns and everything else um I believe that it's a it's a very important tool um for us yeah yeah I mean this is making me even more optimistic and I have been recently because it does feel like privacy is winning you've had uh I'm not sure if you saw I'm sure you did this is your beat but the uh telecoms companies here in the US got back doored and you had the government come out and say hey us
(44:38) consumers you should be using end to end encrypted apps they essentially had to right bend the knee and say all right like this is not good we don't want this back door or people getting hurt because of these back doors that exist in these telecom companies and um we have the Open Secret team here uh in the Commons in Austin and they've been in some really cool stuff with nutrino enclaves to make sure that um app developers have tools to make it so that they can better secure user data and prevent it from being um prevent the possibility from it
(45:11) being um being uh stolen by hackers or nefarious State actors whatever it may be um and it seems like to your point and your ultimate goal of making sure that people can browse um quickly and privately on the internet and just make it the default it seems like we're getting closer in in 2025 no totally and you know one one more point that I'll make is that this is this is sort of um at the edge of our understanding I want to say right I I think most products um have been made with the Assumption of you know at least
(45:58) the the person providing the product would be able to see everything right and be able to do everything and that allows that provider to be much more flexible much more uh it's easier to code really like it's easier to design and code and everything else right um and so when when companies um are making products like this that are endtoend encrypted um it is a it is a challenge but it is not an unsurmountable challenge it's a challenge that's really worth um taking on um and I think that it it's a it's a it's a Cause worth
(46:36) championing because I feel like because of the difficulty of the work um a lot of the time consumers have this dichotomy of you know oh if it's if it's private it's probably going to be uh less easy to use um or you know if it's easy to use It's s of not private that dichotomy gets instilled in in in people's heads but I I don't think it has to be that way I think that you know if we work hard if we really think about how to design these systems um we can actually make products that are as usable as let's say the non-private
(47:12) Alternatives and whatever um and have that into an encryption have um you know preserve our glorious digital comments that's right and so help me better understand the composability of the protocol and the cbase that you've written right now you're using mulad as one of the exit nodes do you envision a future where you'll have a suite of potential exit node partners that you could choose from as an end consumer or um just create diversity at the at the exit node level to give people I would yeah I would really hope
(47:47) so um we we've made it we made our protocol such that um any provider that um operates sort of a wire guard based service we can basically hook into uh and so I I you know we're obviously launching um with mulat because you know we we have a partnership with them and then they they are also you know what we think of as the most trustworthy I think many people think of them as the most trustworthy um vpm provider um but we would hope that you know the the industry opens up and and people become other people's second Hops and uh and
(48:25) things like that right um and I think an important point is is that I think the VPN industry also needs to keep um keep informed of the things that are going on at um at the ITF I mean all of these advancements you know came out of uh you know working working groups there and you know obviously obscure at obscure we have our own little tweaks to make it just a little bit faster a little bit smoother and everything else um but you know there are things coming down the line that I think are are are really um really cool like um like privacy pass um
(49:01) privacy pass is coming out of um uh Cloud Flur research team I believe this is from a few weeks ago uh not a few weeks ago a few years ago now um they also have a working group it's it's meant to solve um the capture problem basically um so if you browse online right now you have all these captas all over the place um and Cloud flare was basically like okay what if you know you can solve a capture uh and store it in your browser as proof um you know for the next I don't know couple of days and don't have to see it for a couple of
(49:39) days right like why why like you know you just prove that you're a human here why doesn't this other thing know that you're a human you just offer up the proof again you know um and so um there there are a lot of uh interesting things coming down the line I'm really excited for um yeah for for for you know our launch and what we've built and and the future of the internet yeah if you could reduce the amount of times have to identify the buses in a in a pictures that would that would be incredible oh and the slow ones the ones where they're
(50:09) like fading for like 5 Seconds you're like dude I I don't and then and then it fades in and it's like the same bus and you're like oh dude I I'm not doing this again that are the puzzle piece then they're getting like even more complex where it's like all right turn the shape and make sure it's pointing in the same direction as once the guy that that puzzle piece one gets me cuz I'm such a I'm I'm like a perfectionist I'm like I I need to make sure I don't think it actually cares but I'm like I need to make sure it's Pixel
(50:42) Perfect uh and for obscura how do you view the long-term vision of the country or country the company uh is a VPN just sort of the the beach head product that you plan on building a suite of products around or um is it VPN only for the foreseeable future well we're we're very focused um on obscure VPN and and I think that you know it there's a lot of improvements let's say to be made to the existing the functionality of VN and whatever um and of course you know we're we're we're launching um on the 11th um with you
(51:23) know um $6 a month and everything and you know on on Mac Osos uh and so we're really focused on the user experience and the usability of our VPN I think that the long-term vision of course our mission is to make the internet um open and private by default and what we want to do in my eyes is really get the VPN experience to be as smooth and as private as we can be the best VPN that we can um and move up the stack um I think that there are um so this was this was sort of out of the ietf there there are a bunch of sort of
(52:08) organizations that that sort of manage standards in the internet protocols but there there's this there's this sense that um you know the internet is layers right is is is you know we have layer one to to layer five or layer seven or whatever um but vpn's provided you IP privacy um which is at the addressing layer um and you can go up these layers to the transport layer to the application layer right so you know even though I'm I'm I'm talking through a VPN right now right like my name is right here right um and so you know it it it
(52:44) um you really have to go up the layers in order to or um to offer better privacy and I think we can do that and we really want to be the company that is um on the user side um in terms of that I want I want to make sure that our users understand that we're always going to make decisions that are for their privacy um and for their betterment and we'll work hard to earn their dollar well I'm very pumped that you particularly are working on this because I I think for anybody who's unaware of Carl's work uh in the Bitcoin space
(53:22) that's listening or watching this you should go back and listen to the episode record I believe in 2019 about reproducible builds and Geeks and how important that is to ensuring that um you're actually downloading the code that you're supposed to be downloading and that you can verify that um uh when you're when you're downloading Bitcoin and that was very hard and sometimes thankless work but extremely important and uh if you're bringing that talent to the VPN world I'm extremely bullish on obscura and our ability to
(53:57) actually have a free open and private internet uh moving forward so I'm pumped for you I know you've been working on this for quite some time and less than a week away from launch here so uh I'm excited I'm running Mac OS so I'm going to download it as soon as I've uh have access to it and take it for a SP yeah sounds good thank you so much Marty and thank you and where can people go to download obscura we'll link to it the show notes obviously but um it's.
(54:32) net obscure net that's how you spell it obscure net obscure net all right we'll send people there Carl hopefully we can catch up uh hopefully it doesn't take six years for us to catch up between this episode and the next we can do it for sure 100% always glad to be on really appreciate it Marty all right thank you peace and love freaks
