What’s it all about?
In an era where online privacy remains an elusive quest, even for the tech-savvy, RawBox emerges as a beacon of anonymity in the digital realm. Navigating the web often begins with surrendering personal data to internet providers or disclosing identifiers at every connection point. RawBox, a paradigm-shifting router, aspires to redefine privacy by offering a decentralized gateway to the internet — a sanctuary where anonymity is not an option but a cornerstone.
Mission and Key Consepts
- Enabling Global Privacy: We’re on a mission to provide worldwide anonymous access to an uncensored internet through our privacy-focused next-gen router.
- Knowledge is key: we’re here to educate and guide users in boosting their privacy know-how for everyday use.
- Connecting Guardians: creating a market of independent privacy providers.
What’s the Problem?
Current privacy solutions are advancing, but there’s much room for improvement, especially in enabling anonymous and private internet access.
Privacy is often compromised from the start — such as when paying for internet access with a credit card or disclosing personal identifiers like phone numbers.
Seems a bit dystopian, right? So, what’s the solution?
The solution is spinning around router concept. It has been repeatedly discussed as a significant element in the Nym project (see the Whitepaper.)
Basically, you may find the idea of privacy at the heart of everything Nym does. This is why ensuring privacy at every stage of information movement, from entry to exit, and at every node and participant, is crucial.
Why Existing Routers Fall Short:
In the familiar landscape of our homes, routers and extra servers may abound. Yet, prevailing solutions falter, neglecting crucial aspects:
1. Complete Self-Sovereignty:
Current options lack the embodiment of true self-sovereignty — an encompassing sanctuary within your home. RawBox redefines this paradigm, consolidating internet access and nodes into a singular box seamlessly integrated into your network.
2. Privacy-Enabled Internet Purchasing and Earnings:
Existing setups overlook the critical junctions of privacy-enabled internet transactions and compensatory avenues for participants. RawBox charts a new course, ensuring both functional and private internet experiences for owners. It presents an opportunity for participants to earn, establishing a symbiotic relationship within the decentralized ecosystem.
Amidst these shortcomings, the RawBox solution emerges as a beacon, poised to transform the landscape of personal networking.
What’s the Exact Solution?
RawBox — NYM-enabled router that will become the closest physical access point to the NYM mixnet infrastructure for the user. Anyone can buy private internet directly from such routers by paying it in BTC/Lightning Network.
It allows everyone to enter the decentralized economy and become an independent privacy provider, receiving fair payment for both transport/bandwidth and additional services such as gateways, mix-network, tor, i2p, etc.
Win-Win-Win: What makes the router valuable?
Our squad’s router solution is poised to become an integral part of the entire Nym architecture and ecosystem — an indispensable addition and enhancement for the upcoming NymVPN.
Privacy issues aren’t solely addressed through the mixnet. First, there needs to be a private way to connect to it.
Another crucial aspect is ensuring an adequate quantity and quality of exit gateways, especially in anticipation of the VPN launch. This is where our squad’s solution is expected to provide significant assistance.
Functionality in a nutshell
This will be a router and a self-custodial node in a single box (RawBox). It will be utterly autonomous hardware that handles payments, provides internet access, and routes external traffic.
Some RawBox use cases:
- Example 1: You live in Canada and pay $100 monthly for internet. I want to pay $50 or less. My neighbors (or anyone else) can buy the desired bandwidth directly from my home router, even without asking me.
- Example 2: I rent an apartment and don’t want to negotiate with anyone. I buy internet from a neighbor’s router and get guaranteed speed. I can switch to another neighbor if the previous one doesn’t meet my needs. This is a market.
- Example 3: I’m in a hotel or city hot-spot, and I don’t want to send my phone, card, hotel room number, etc., to anyone.
- Example 4: I’m a privacy enthusiast or a journalist, and I need to send a private message without buying seven SIM cards, and so on. In other words, it’s entirely decentralized.
And in the process, you don’t lose anything. You still use a high-speed, enterprise-class router.
Besides that, you can run your mixnode on the router without buying a hosting.
This will seriously enhance decentralization, scalability, and speed in the mixnet.
Globally for the worldwide community, this will:
- Allow the creation of a ‘people’s’ internet on top of the existing centralized one (only the uplink is needed from the provider; everything inside is mixed and encrypted).
- Enable router owners to partially or wholly offset their provider costs.
- It will be easy for node operators to install or purchase a node, connect it to the internet at home, and attach their keys. The node will receive regular verified updates and more.
RawBox Roadmap
- Create a step-by-step guide on how to build your own router from the open hardware and software and make money on it as a self-sovereign individual.
- Create the plugin for the OPNsense, allowing people to buy vouchers at the captive portal with BTC/Lightning via BTCPay Server directly from the router and create an isolated environment for each user (VLANs, rules, etc).
- Create a proof-of-concept (prototype) of the RawBox router based on OPNsense (FOSS enterprise-grade firewall), BTCPay Server, and Nym services.
- Create deployment script for Nym gateway and mix-node to the router and build it into the web-based admin panel.
- Create reference design of RawBox for single and large deployments.
- Сreate a basic physical infrastructure for a new generation of decentralized Internet.
Technical implementation steps
👉 For more details, visit RawBox graypaper.
Conclusion
As the RawBox team charts its course, the mission is clear: to scale the Nym infrastructure significantly, championing a self-sovereign router accessible to all.
In this venture, the team envisions not only a product but a blueprint for the economy of decentralized network providers, one where fair economy meets true privacy.
Stay tunned for more updates!
