Reader, may I pause you there for a moment and have a quick peek in your emails? No?
Well, how about your Twitter DMs? Thought so…
But you’re not a criminal are you? You have nothing to hide, right?
I bet you close your curtains once the sun sets down and you switch on the lights, even if you’re just cooking or watching TV. What do you have to hide?
You’ve undoubtedly thought at some point or another that being anonymous equates to having something to hide. But most of the time it’s just plain privacy that you desire.
Just as we close the world off at night to our homely habitat, so too should we have privacy with our internet activity. But that, my friend, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Everyone’s watching. And it’s sickening really.
More than likely you’re above surface level, reading this article on the Clearnet.
So too is your internet service provider.
We give away so much information about ourselves, all the while thinking that we’re hidden behind our curtains. And this merely as a trade for free and convenient digital services.
Repeat after me: “If I’m not paying for the product, I am the product.”
If you’re using a VPN service or tools like MetaMask to cloak your identity, think long and hard about where your data begins, ends, and whose servers it flows through.
Even if you’re doing nothing illegal, your privacy is a fundamental right. I can’t think of a more invasive look into someone’s mind than filing back through their internet search history.
Not to mention censorship…
What we take for granted in some parts of the world is severely limited in others, creating vastly altered worldviews in today’s seemingly connected world. It’s quite sad really. And with or without this censored worldview, our digital and physical lives are becoming more mingled whether we like it or not. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, then only 12 countries around the world have enforced principles of Net Neutrality.
Whether you’re being tracked, hacked or held all the way back by government censoring from the men in black, the modern day internet is a far cry from the idealistic model of its humble beginnings.
Beyond the clutch of internet service providers lies the deep dark web, a place renowned for hackers, hustlers, hitmen and honeypots. But of course, it’s the most notorious use cases that rise to the top of the news headlines. The anonymous world of private interconnectivity is precisely what allows for investigative journalism and critical communication to flourish.
This is made possible thanks to anonymity networks, such as Tor, The Onion Router.

A brief primer on Tor

Pause here for a moment dear reader, and grab an onion from your kitchen (those of you scrolling your phone on the toilet, you’ll just need to imagine this part). Now chop your onion in half. Take a look at the cross section. Your onion is built layer upon layer upon layer, each layer enveloping the previous section and all of its contents.
This, ladies and gents, is what the Tor network does to your internet traffic.
Tor offers internet users a way to communicate privately using so-called 3 hop technology. A distributed network of computers manages the flow of data in such a manner that the data is constantly encrypted and rerouted.
Source: arstechnica.com
Once you’ve made a physical connection to the internet, your first port of call will be at a Tor relay computer. This physical device could take on various forms, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just imagine it being someone’s desktop PC. Up to here your internet service provider can see that you’ve made contact with a Tor computer. But it’s at this point that the trace gets lost in a magical maelstrom of encrypted code and mathematics far too boring to explain here.
After the 3 hops, your identifiable signal is pretty well hidden and you can choose to hang around and explore other hidden websites, or venture back out into the Clearnet with your newfound identity.
Heading back out enables you to conduct your business privately, although certain applications like banking will more than likely block your access on the basis of your cloaked IP address being a known Tor relay.
Staying within the darknet offers a whole new level of discovery. And risk. It’s not for the faint of heart.
The level of privacy and uncensored internet access offered by Tor is excellent, but it’s not without its faults.

The thing about Tor

Do you know who funds Tor? The US government…
The same technology that enables hitmen and drug dealers to earn their living, first began life as a US Navy research project back in the mid-90s. These days the network is maintained by a non-profit called The Tor Project and is supported primarily by US government funding, donations and the goodwill of its volunteer relay operators.
Source: https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-2021-and-2022-financials/
This organisational structure brings up two key issues: centralised network control and a lack of incentives for volunteer operators.
As long as the network is supported by volunteers, it will remain challenging to scale and provide easy-to-use tools for mass adoption. Providing users with reliable bandwidth has been a sticking point of Tor’s for many years.
From what I gather on the Tor Metrics section of the Tor website, there are currently around 8000 relays supporting the network.
Source: https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html
Notice the drop around mid-November 2023? We’ll get to that shortly.

DePIN paves the way for a people-powered privacy solution

There’s a movement gathering pace in the crypto world at the moment. Decentralised physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) combine blockchain technology with cryptoeconomic rewards to tackle real-world issues on a global scale. Where centralised structures hit the wall due to scaling and funding issues, DePIN projects look poised to revolutionise problem-solving.
This story right here is bringing me full circle. Learning about the dark web for a novel I was working on first pulled me down the crypto rabbit hole. And here I am several years later looking at a project that ties it all back together again.
ATOR (previously known as AirTor) identified Tor’s inherent scaling issues and set out to improve the network’s bandwidth by introducing an incentive layer for their relay operators. Launching in February 2023, ATOR’s vision spoke to crypto natives and privacy advocates alike.
In a matter of months, around 2,000 of Tor’s relay operators were running ATOR nodes and the success of this initiative obviously ruffled some feathers. The change did not bring any apparent security vulnerabilities to the network as no 3rd party software or plugins were required; the details of ATOR’s ERC-20 token was merely added in a publicly facing text file. By November 2023 however, a sudden drop in operators was observed, followed swiftly by a blog post from the Tor Project in which they acknowledged the removal of a large number of relays from the Tor network (remember that graph above?). While not naming names, it was pretty clear who their message was targeted at.
This coincided with a nosedive on the charts for the ATOR token.
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/airtor-protocol/
The ATOR team was swift to reply with their own written statement, thus marking the starting point for a whole new chapter.
While not incorrect or in any way ill-intentioned, Tor’s approach seems destined to be limited. Let’s face it, volunteering is great, but people need to work. All those folk on the metro, stuck in traffic jams and sitting in call centres all day aren’t volunteering to do their jobs. They have bills to pay. Rewarding participation through hard earned cash (or crypto tokens) is the only way to scale. This approach is being made increasingly tangible thanks to the DePIN model.

ATOR emerges as an independent network

After this seismic philosophical rift, ATOR decided to fork off for once and for all. With Tor being an open source project, it was possible for ATOR to copy the code from GitHub and develop their own network. From sitting above Tor, the project is now splitting off on its own chosen path.
Forking is part and parcel of crypto, whether at the blockchain level such as with Bitcoin & Bitcoin Cash, or on the application level as we’ve seen time and again with DeFi projects and ERC-20 tokens copy-pasting each other’s smart contract codes.
This instance however is rather intriguing as ATOR is not forking one blockchain into another; it’s forking “traditional” software into an entirely new crypto project. In doing so, ATOR will focus on adding privacy to applications that people already use, instead of focusing purely on Tor’s niche browser use case. This shift in approach opens the door to a much more mainstream audience.
Learning from this confrontation, ATOR now aims to address the specific challenges that have so far riddled the Tor network:

• Reward relays for their work
• Design a better governance structure
• Scale internet privacy out to the masses
• Provide a dedicated plug and play hardware solution

The ATOR Tokenomics paper lays out the project’s aspirations eloquently:

The ATOR Protocol is a scalable web infrastructure and decentralized token distribution layer, that together allows internet relays to earn ATOR tokens for contributing their bandwidth, starting with the Tor network and then broadening to a range of use-cases. ATOR aims to have 250,000 active relays on the protocol within 5 years.

Rewarding participation with tokens is a straightforward DePIN concept. The token itself will play an important part in the governance of the project. We’ll dive into the tokenomics further down below.
For now, let’s take a quick look at ATOR’s plans for hardware and their plans to scale out to 250,000 relays.

Scaling privacy

Given ATOR’s positioning within the tech-savvy community of DePIN enthusiasts, launching a hardware-focused project seems like a no-brainer. The goal then seems to be to attract this dedicated audience of DePIN builders and cement ATOR as the sector-wide standard for privacy. The timing couldn’t be better. With the market in a positive uptrend amidst the 11 successful spot Bitcoin ETF launches and Bitcoin’s halving around the corner, DePIN projects offering real-world utility should shine brightly over the coming year or two.
But privacy remains a key issue, especially with DePIN contributors filling map hexagons with potentially identifiable information. Getting this use case right should serve as a stepping stone to larger scale adoption.
For this purpose, the ATOR team has partnered up with Hotspotty, the founders of the DePIN Hub website and newsletter. With an email list of over 230k readers, the Hotspotty team is a significant voice for crypto builders around the world.

Signature hardware

The ATOR Relay model should serve to provide plug and play onboarding onto private internet applications. The added advantage of using this low-powered unit is that it doubles as an access point router, thus providing multiple users with a gateway to a private end-to-end encrypted internet experience, all the while earning the owner ATOR tokens.
Source: ATOR Tokenomics paper
The size of the VPN market is forecasted to grow significantly over the coming decade so this is certainly a lucrative market to offer a distinctive product. Add to this the possibility of eating into functionalities like cloud storage and streaming, and the possibilities for growth are exponential.

Who is behind ATOR?

Despite ATOR’s anonymous nature, the project is actually overseen by a registered company in Norway: ATOR Labs AS. Like most DePIN projects, effectively addressing real-world issues requires a tangible connection with the physical world. There are some strong profiles in there too, including CTO Jim Toth and Lead Architect Dr. Andrzej Tuchołka.
Source: https://www.ator.io/
ATOR has also partnered up with the Forté Group to help scale out the network following the fallout with the Tor network. Having worked on both blockchain based projects as well Fortune 500 companies, this partnership adds even more weight to ATOR’s intentions.

ATOR’s protocol features

ATOR leverages many network design components from the original Tor network while adding additional features and tweaks.
Anonymous routing is of course a core component of the protocol. This is made possible thanks to the 3 hop onion routing method we touched upon earlier.
The network itself is governed by a decentralised system of autonomous directory authorities whose task it is to monitor the performance of the participating relays. As this is a decentralised process, these authorities are required to stake ATOR tokens to unlock this level of responsibility.
Developer tools will allow people to build innovative applications and services on top of the ATOR network.
Relays who maintain good standing and offer bandwidth to the network eventually become eligible for rewards. The consensus mechanism that oversees this is called Proof of Uptime.
Finally, ATOR employs a distinct dual blockchain architecture, making use of both the Ethereum and Arweave blockchains. Ethereum’s powerful EVM serves as the execution environment for ATOR’s smart contract while Arweave’s Permaweb ensures sustainable methods for tracking metrics, processing distribution and housing long-term immutable data.
We’re barely scratching the surface here, I’d recommend diving into ATOR Technical Whitepaper if you’re curious to learn more.

ATOR Tokenomics

I’ll start by saying that the team did extensive research on their ATOR token. After hiring Hristo Piyankov from FinDaS to finetune their token, they published a 29 page document that goes deep into the various aspects of the token’s design and utility. I’ll sum up a few key points here in this article, but those of you wishing to dive deeper can gather more insight in the ATOR Tokenomics paper.
To begin with, let’s take a quote from the paper:

The ATOR token is an ERC20 token developed on the Ethereum network. It is a fixed supply token that will serve as a core payment method and incentivization driver on the ATOR Protocol. The token will be given as a recognition reward to relay operators while also generating governance rights. The ultimate goal of the ATOR token is to be the primary currency for anonymous web2 and web3 services running on decentralized nodes worldwide.

Some key concepts to grasp from this statement are:

• Fixed supply token
• Rewards to relay operators
• Governance rights

Let’s dive in.

ATOR: A fixed supply token

The ATOR token was subject to a fair launch, with no presale or venture backing. However, a 4% buy/sell tax was introduced to help with bootstrapping the project’s early development. This is expected to drop to 0% over time.
15% of the supply is set apart for the team, outreach and development, and is subject to a linear vesting schedule, theoretically preventing, or at least dampening the impact of sudden unlocks.
Source: ATOR Tokenomics paper
100,000,000 tokens make up the limited total supply and over 88% is circulating at the time of writing.

Relay rewards

The ATOR network demands some serious commitment from its relays. Participants are required to lock 100 ATOR per relay for 180 days in a lock contract to begin earning rewards. After this 180 day period, they are free to remove their tokens, or simply leave them there to continue earning. It’s important to note that this 100 ATOR deposit requirement is waived for users who purchase an official ATOR Relay hardware node.
What’s interesting about the rewards is the manner in which they decrease over time.
Source: ATOR Tokenomics paper
The Tokenomics paper sums it up nicely:

1. The pool starts with 10,000,000 tokens.
2. The epoch daily reward is set at 0.100% of the pool’s tokens. This means that each day, for the first epoch, the pool will distribute 10,000 tokens.
3. The epoch duration is 15 days, so on day 15, 150,000 tokens have been distributed.
4. Epoch Two starts. The tokens in the pool are now 9,850,000. The Epoch reward is still 0.100%. This works out to 9,850 tokens per day for the next 15 days.

In summary, the variables determining the reward distribution are:

• 0.100% of the outstanding tokens in the pool will be used as a basis for the daily epoch rewards.
• Epoch duration of 15 days

With a fair launch and decreasing reward mechanism, it’s fair to say that the tokenomics must have been inspired somewhat by Bitcoin.

Governance

As you can expect from ATOR’s rift with the Tor Project, governance will play a critical role in the future of the project. The ATOR token will have an important part to play. This will be made possible thanks to an innovative dual staking mechanism granting voting rights to participating relays.
Source: ATOR Tokenomics paper
While the project is currently receiving direction from ATOR Labs in Norway, the project intends on developing into a DAO structure, at which point this governance structure will be of utmost importance. Decisions concerning the future of the protocol, relay incentives, and the handling of malicious activity will be covered under this structure.

The roadmap to decentralised privacy

The ATOR project is too complex to sum up in a flashy roadmap graphic. The roadmap page itself is divided into 6 distinct phases:

1. Project Launch
2. Relays, Registration and Metrics
3. ATOR Relay v1 and Protocol Validators
4. Incentivization Protocol Beta and Hardware
5. Building the ATOR Network
6. The ATOR Network For Services

Each phase contains numerous milestones, and from what I can gather the team is working on milestone 4b: “First Open Testing of ATOR Relay”. The phases in the roadmap are of course subject to change, as is the case with any live project (especially one that had a massive strategy pivot only a few months prior).
After the successful presale of the first 1,000 ATOR Relay units, it’s up to the team now to ship the product and make 2024 a year of growth and onboarding. From what I’ve seen on Twitter and in various chat groups, the ATOR and DePIN communities are revving their engines in anticipation of this DePIN focused anonymity network.
But the enthusiasm has spread beyond the degens and seems now to be shared with crypto industry behemoth Messari. In their recent State of DePIN 2023 report, ATOR is alluded to as a possible “killer DePIN consumer use case: buy a WiFi router, secure all your home internet traffic through it, and earn tokens for doing so”.
Several DePIN projects have expressed their interest in routing their traffic through ATOR relays and this specific use case is the first thing you’ll see when you land on the ATOR website.
Source: https://www.ator.io/

Challenges for ATOR

If it was so easy to do, it would already have been done.
The eventual success of ATOR depends on multiple hurdles, and how they overcome or at least address these challenges. Technical issues will continue to persist, but with the right resources, anything is possible. For starters, the project will ultimately need to scale out to cover multiple blockchain ecosystems (i.e. become multichain) in order to address a larger audience, but from what I gather that’s part of their long-term vision.
It’s the more human aspects that interest me, and there are 2 specific ones that come to mind:

• Avoid infighting. Such an anon style project needs to be ultra tight with its project coordination. With crypto prices going up, it’s easy to keep morale high and projects on track. When prices trend down, it’s a whole other ball game.
• Be careful whose feather they ruffle. Remember who backs the Tor network?

How to run an anonymous network is certainly a hot topic. I looked through the comment section of the above-mentioned Tor forum post and it shows that the same incentivisation models that make DePINs so effective are precisely the same criticisms that are being thrown ATOR’s way. This goes to show what a double-edged sword DePIN projects rest upon and how the slicing of the token distribution pie can become so critical in defining a project’s chance of success.

How to get involved?

So you’ve gotten your first taste of onion routing and despite the challenges you’re willing to take the plunge. OK then, here’s your first challenge. A lot of ATOR’s educational material has become irrelevant due to their change in strategy last November. This will likely change soon but do be careful when looking at resources such as the ATOR YouTube channel or their Relay Education platform.
In fact, getting involved in the ATOR Discord is probably the best place to start. As with almost every other DePIN project, a lively Discord with helpful mods is a sign of a serious initiative and ATOR’s is no different in that respect.
But you’re in a hurry to get those token rewards right? What about that hardware?
Well I’m sorry to tell you that the presale got gobbled up in 31 minutes. The first 1,000 relay units have been reserved for the wallet addresses that minted out the Atornaut NFT collection.

The units themselves have not yet been shipped. When the time comes, the NFT holders can redeem their tokens for the units (along with paying an additional 250 ATOR tokens). That being said, some NFTs are trading on the open market. Check out the Atornauts collection on OpenSea for the correct NFT set — and as always, watch out for scams! The correct ATOR collection should have 1,000 units. Demand is high, and the NFT floor price is almost triple the original mint price (0.1 ETH) at the time of writing.
Come February, users will also have the possibility to install the ATOR Linux package and run a node on their personal hardware. Keep an eye on ATOR’s GitHub page and Twitter profile for the latest info.

Decision time at the crossroads of digital privacy

I’ll be brutally honest here (sorry moonboys and Lambo bros). Regardless of the impressive tokenomics and sleek looking hardware, it’s hard to say whether or not ATOR will change the world of internet privacy.
On one hand, I admire the passion and resourcefulness that their team and community brings to this issue. I believe privacy, whether physical or digital, should be a fundamental right for everyone, no matter what country they live in or which divine book they lay their hand on.
On the other hand, convincing people to change their ways in the face of high-bandwidth, ultra-fast, digital convenience is a tough obstacle to climb.
I suppose it all comes down to better, more transparent education and recognising things for what they truly are. I’m certainly no expert in this field but I’ve come to understand that our data is an extremely valuable asset and governments and corporations in every jurisdiction are feasting on this.
The more ATOR manages to wake people up to this fact, the higher their chance of success. Then it’s over to you.
Will you take control of your data and regain your digital sovereignty? If so, will you take an active role, weigh in on governance matters and opt to get paid for your efforts?
Or will you take a more passive role, sit back and rely on the whims of donors and volunteers?
The destiny of ATOR and DePIN as a whole lies in your hands, anon.