The recent nationwide internet outage in Afghanistan has highlighted a critical weakness of the world’s leading decentralized blockchains: their dependence on centralized internet providers that remain vulnerable to government intervention and technical failures.
The country suffered a near-total internet shutdown that lasted about 48 hours before connectivity was restored on October 1, Reuters reported. The disruption was reportedly ordered by the Taliban government, although officials later blamed “technical problems” with fiber optic cables.
While blockchains aim to provide people with a public, censorship-resistant network for value transfer, their reliance on centralized Internet service providers makes these use cases challenging during Internet outages.
“The power outage in Afghanistan is not just a regional connectivity crisis: it is a wake-up call,” said Mikhail Angelov, co-founder of decentralized WiFi platform Roam Network. “If connectivity is monopolized by a handful of centralized providers, the promise of blockchain could collapse overnight,” he said.
The nationwide outage of internet and mobile data services affected about 13 million citizens, according to a September report from ABC News. This marks the first nationwide internet shutdown under Taliban rule, following regional restrictions imposed earlier in September to curb online activities deemed “immoral.”
The Taliban denied the ban and blamed the internet outage on technical problems, including problems with the fiber optic cable.
Source: ProtonVPN
Iran has also faced problems with internet censorship since the start of its conflict with Israel.
The Iranian government cut off internet access for 13 days in June, except for domestic messaging apps, prompting Iranians to seek hidden internet proxy links for temporary access, The Guardian reported on June 25.
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DePIN projects build decentralized internet infrastructure
The blackout in Afghanistan adds momentum to calls for decentralized connectivity solutions that eliminate single checkpoints.
Decentralized wireless networks are emerging as an alternative to centralized Internet providers, part of a broader technological shift known as a decentralized physical infrastructure network, or DePIN.
Roam aims to build a smartphone-powered decentralized wireless network that crowdsources mobile signal measurements to create a ‘living map of connectivity’.
Together with the project’s inbound eSIM deployment, this will allow devices to automatically select the best available internet options, including public providers, a private mesh, or a peer-powered local area network.
“Roam users can see what works where in real time: no guesswork during outages,” ensuring a connection even when “centralized backbones go down,” says Angelov
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World Mobile Ecosystem Statistics. Source: worldmobile.io
World Mobile is the largest decentralized network with 2.3 million daily active users spanning more than 20 countries, according to data from worldmobile.io
The project surpassed total revenue of $9.8 million in August, representing revenue split between AirNode operators, stakers and other contributors.
Helium network statistics. Source: world.helium.com
Helium is the second largest decentralized wireless network, serving over 190 countries and a total of 112,000 hotspots worldwide. It claims to have more than 1.3 million daily users on its decentralized network.
Users are incentivized to host an internet coverage hotspot through Helium (HNT) token rewards.
Proponents say blockchain technology’s promise of financial freedom and resistance to censorship cannot be fully realized until the underlying Internet itself becomes more distributed.
As Angelov put it, “If decentralization stops at the protocol layer, we haven’t really solved the problem – we’ve just shifted where control lies.”
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