How Blockchain Can Fix the Tor Project’s Biggest Flaw and Create a Truly Free Internet

The United Nations (UN) – a forum of 193 nations – considers freedom of expression a fundamental human right, according to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It says:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through all media and regardless of frontiers.”

However, disinformation – i.e. false information deliberately spread to deceive people – has been one of the biggest threats to freedom of expression and creates a loophole for organizations and governments to impose censorship.

The problem, the UN says, is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of disinformation because of the different contexts – elections, wars, etc. – that spring concerns about disinformation.

The result: different authorities and organizations create their own definition and censor everything that falls within it. This has led to denial of, or limited access to, information in some parts of the world. Countries such as China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have been criticized for censorship, including denying citizens access to certain information and content online.

Savvy internet users have sought ways to circumvent government and corporate censorship via tools including virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Tor network, which allow varying levels of a private and secure connection to the internet.

But these tools either don’t offer foolproof privacy or have flaws in the user experience.

Tomi, a Web3 company, believes it has a more effective solution to help people in places with heavy censorship and surveillance get fair access to the information through its parallel internet called TomiNet.

“What we’re creating is an alternative internet network that we believe is what the internet would look like if it were created today,” says Techno Prince, a pseudonymous member of Tomi’s founding team. “When the internet was created, I’m sure they wanted to allow freedom of information and expression, but because the architecture of the technology includes [internet protocols] IPs and centralized devices that [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] ICANN controls domain names, the result is that authorities can, through IPs, know who is saying what, go after them and block websites.

“IPs are a major vulnerability in the architecture of the internet.”

Tor – short for The Onion Routing project – is the closest thing to TomiNet, says Prince. The difference is that Tomi wants to fix what it considers to be errors in the Tor setup.

“Tor is the first meaningful attempt to free the internet, but they [made] a few errors; it became a dark web instead of a free web because there is no governance for this network,” Prince said. “The result was that it became a paradise for criminals, pedophiles and other bad actors.”

Nevertheless, Tomi identifies the value of Tor’s underlying architecture and incorporates some of Tor’s privacy features into its parallel internet.

“We use the onion protocol’s IP encryption technology, but with our own blockchain-based one [Domain Name System] DNS, Prince said.

This is to alleviate the usability issues plaguing the Tor network. Onion addresses are not as easily readable as the well-known domain names; they are made of a string of 56 letters and numbers followed by “.onion”.

Prince said Tomi routes its onion-type addresses to traditional domain names. The difference is that these domain names must be purchased within the Tomi ecosystem. Essentially, a news website that wants to reach readers worldwide without restrictions can purchase a .com domain name and host a version of the website in TomiNet. Users can visit TomiNet websites via the Tomi browser.

In addition, Tomi hopes to avoid building a web hotel for illegal activities by introducing a management layer. TomiNet is designed to be fully controlled by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAODAO
), allowing community participants to control and censor the network.

Prince says the DAO is full decentralized and in the chain and already has each possible management scenario and processes hardcoded into a smart contract. Essentially, users will be able to vote on decisions ranging from censorship, financial management, replacement of the core development team, etc., and the smart contract will automatically execute the prevailing decisions. Tomi is building his network to be fully controlled by a DAO to limit individual influence.

By using a similar architecture to Tor and adding a governance layer, Tomi hopes to build a parallel network that is both accessible to everyone and resistant to government and corporate censorship.

While this is exciting in theory, the project is likely to face centralized opposition, potentially significant enough to hinder its chances of success. For example, the project may face some of the challenges that Tor has also faced.

There have been instances of governments attempting to block citizens from accessing Tor. As recently as December 2021, Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor passed a court order allowing it to mandate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block the Tor website, which is the main source of the Tor browser. In China, the Tor website is completely banned, and users often have to download the Tor browser through third-party websites. Tomi could find herself fighting the same battles.

There is also the issue of competing with the billion and trillion dollar companies behind leading browsers such as Google Chrome, Safari, Edge, etc. Tomi would need a large marketing budget to have even the slightest chance of challenging these incumbents and building a good public image for the project. And even then, success is not guaranteed. It is unknown how consumers will receive it. Researchers have found evidence that individuals in heavily censored regions such as China “typically do not expend significant energy seeking out censored or alternative sources of information” in normal times. The desire to find censored information only increases in times of crisis.

When asked about these clusters, Prince said: “We are aware of the challenges ahead. When you weigh the potential benefits of a truly free web for the world against the costs, it becomes clearer that it’s worth a try.”