metadata: {"signature": "0x07bb7674927b7364b114ca90f70a0d657a44b5ed58c8a1426acdb491ee35f2d3180c9c6ba2d02a7a5daafeb4bf14278e132e86834e16fc7f8de3a2c7c9bdb8d31c", "application": {"round": "0x1427a0e71a222b0229a910dc72da01f8f04c7441", "answers": [{"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Mole The Wall: censorship-circumventing VPN", "hidden": true, "question": "Application Name", "questionId": 0}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Mole the Wall was founded in early 2021 out of frustration with the state of the internet, particularly VPNs in Iran, which were unreliable, too expensive, and locally operated VPNs couldn't be trusted. The vision remains to enable every person to access the open internet despite evolving and increasingly intrusive censorship or surveillance by creating an ever-evolving set of censorship-circumvention tools.\n\nThe project was initiated and is managed by two Iranian software engineers who emigrated to Germany and a European cybersecurity expert with a deep understanding of Chinese censorship tools.\n\nTogether, we were able to both map the censorship measures employed and outcompete the censors. As a result, our VPN was one of very few VPN services that operated 100% uninterrupted during the Mahsa Amini protests and maintained usable speeds in situations where all major VPNs were blocked and even generic internet traffic was heavily restricted by ISPs. Overall, we have over two years of uninterrupted operations in Iran and 1.5 years in China. We are proud to have made a difference for hundreds of users, some of whom thanked us for enabling them to reach the community, while others said the stable service saved their small business when the internet was heavily censored and no other VPNs worked.\n\nWe were fortunate to have received support from IranUnchained, which enabled us to help hundreds more journalists, lawyers, activists, and other people at risk in Iran to break through censorship, bypass surveillance, and access the open internet.\n\nWe believe that a well-maintained VPN tailored specifically to circumvent Iranian censorship will remain important in the future, as no major VPN providers have been able to reliably circumvent the censorship even a year after the new wave of censorship started. For more information, please visit https://www.molethewall.com/. 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The vision remains to enable every person to access the open internet despite evolving and increasingly intrusive censorship or surveillance by creating an ever-evolving set of censorship-circumvention tools.\n\nThe project was initiated and is managed by two Iranian software engineers and a cybersecurity expert with a deep understanding of Chinese censorship tools.\n\nTogether, we were able to both map the censorship measures employed and outcompete the censors. As a result, our VPN was one of very few VPN services that operated 100% uninterrupted during the Mahsa Amini protests and maintained usable speeds in situations where all major VPNs were blocked and even generic internet traffic was heavily restricted by ISPs. Overall, we have over two years of uninterrupted operations in Iran and 1.5 years in China. We are proud to have made a difference for hundreds of users, some of whom thanked us for enabling them to reach the community, while others said the stable service saved their small business when the internet was heavily censored and no other VPNs worked.\n\nWe were fortunate to have received support from IranUnchained, which enabled hundreds more journalists, lawyers, activists, and other people at risk in Iran to break through censorship, bypass surveillance, and access the open internet.\n\nWe believe that a well-maintained VPN tailored specifically to circumvent Iranian censorship will remain important in the future, as no major VPN providers have been able to reliably circumvent the censorship even a year after the new wave of censorship started. For more information, please visit https://www.molethewall.com/. Please feel free to reach out to us if you need help accessing the open internet or believe you can help our cause.", "lastUpdated": 0, "projectTwitter": "Mole_The_Wall"}, "recipient": "0x375Cd2F3d5C7c2D973D86Da06f0C25F68DC6acd2"}}