Is Mysterium Blockchain-based VPN as good as its claimed to be?

I’ve been hearing a lot about the new Mysterium blockchanin based vpn. The Mystereim developers have stated its an anonymous vpn thats better than Tor and the “pay for” vpn in many ways. AFAICT it’s a token based decentralized p2p network based on the Ethereum blockchain. Clients are able to “earn” tokens by renting a portion of their bandwidth to the network. The node operators are compensated with the tokens. You can read the Mysterium Whitepaper or you can go to their site here for more info.

I obviously have a few questions I was hoping someone could help me out with.

  1. Mysterium is based on the Etheruem blockchain so does that imply that its just as secure or even more secure than other vpn solutions like Openvpn.

  2. If Mysterium is in fact a secure VPN solution can it be chained with Tor? I know the Etherium client uses a listner ( TCP ) port and a discovery ( UDP ) port so would this mean users would have to tunnel Mysterium through Tor if they wanted to chain the two of them together?

  3. The developers claim Mysterium is an anonymity network thats comparable to or even better than Tor in some ways like higher network bandwidth and more financial incentive to be a node opperator which in turn will lead to more node opperators . (see the Mysterium Whitepaper competitive Analysis Graph ) I’m having a hard time believing that.

    a) Tor is free to use whereas users pay to use the Mysterium network ( Winner Tor ).

    b) If you are paying for the Mysterium network with tokens that leaves some sort of “paper trail” that would take away from user pseudonymity. ( Winner Tor ).

    c) I’m far from being an expert but I thought the Ethereum blockchain was designed to be a secure p2p network not a anonymity network, whereas Tor was designed from the beginning to be an anonymous network. ( Winner Tor )

Those are just a few ways Tor comes out on top of Mysterium. Are they just saying Mysterium is better than Tor and current VPN solutions to drum up press and user base or could Mysterium be the great tech that they say it is? It sounds like a great idea but I’ve always been told that if something sounds to good to be true then stay away from it. I hope I’m wrong

I looked at their whitepaper and there are no meaningful technical details or specs on how its implemented to resist strong adversaries. Also who is behind it and what is their reputation for researching and building such complex systems? With the exception of a couple of cryptocurrencies, every billing system is a surveillance system.

Also wasn’t Ethereum hacked to shreds a few months ago? Do people still buy it?

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@HulaHoop Thanks for your reply. I don’t know all that much about IT opsec (I’m learning though) I appreciate you shedding some light on the subject for me.

@vinodkumar why did you create a copy of @0brand first post in a new Thread ?

Since i didn’t see this post back then and it was posted again i’ll throw in my 2 satoshis.

It’s less secure, Ethereum is a terrible Project with many MANY Problems.
It can be easily “DDOS’ed” (look what happened with Cryptokitties and imagine a serious attacker…)[1], it’s higly centralized (the DAO fork)[2], running a Node is getting more and more difficult because of the Blockchain size[3], Dapps are just Bugfests written by incompetent People (Parity’s wallets for example)[4][5]… and so on …

I don’t think this is a good idea, since Mysterium is just Vaporware

This “Developer” is a cash hungry moron, the only reason he is saying this is to sell his useless Token.He probably sold all of his Token, by the looks of it [6] Don’t trust, verify and there is nothing to verify… a anonymity project based on a selected userbase (paying users) is just Stupid and does not give any kind of anonymity, you’re better off using a normal VPN if you like fixed Nodes.

Tor is designed that way so spooks can hide behind other Peoples traffic and yes it superior to Mysteriums “design”

Correct, besides the paper trail, Ethereum is an unusable Mess without any real use case, except Pump and Dump Shitcoin/Token distribution.

Wrong, Ethereum was design to make it’s creators rich and those who invested in the ICO, Vitalik is a known scammer (look at his “quantum computer” project before Ethereum)[7]

Mysterium and all the other “Blockchain” Projects that came after Bitcoin are just copy cats that try to grab some of that sweet sweet Blockchain Hype [8]… they will be gone in a couple of years when the Pump&Dump ends…

Everything besides Money doesn’t need a Blockchain, there is no benefit in adding a Blockchain to these Projects.

Blockchain this Blockchain that, your Project is fucking useless crap!

Links:
[1]https://www.coindesk.com/loveable-digital-kittens-clogging-ethereums-blockchain/
[2]https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/the-dao-the-hack-the-soft-fork-and-the-hard-fork/
[3]The Ethereum-blockchain size has exceeded 1TB, and yes, it’s an issue | HackerNoon
[4]Yes, this kid really just deleted $300 MILLION by messing around with Ethereum’s smart contracts. | HackerNoon
[5]anyone can kill your contract · Issue #6995 · openethereum/parity-ethereum · GitHub
[6]Mysterium price today, MYST to USD live price, marketcap and chart | CoinMarketCap
[7]Gregory Maxwell: "Vitalik Buterin Ran A Quantum Computer Scam"
[8]https://medium.com/bitfwd/how-to-do-an-ico-on-ethereum-in-less-than-20-minutes-a0062219374

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Thanks for the great write-up @goldstein-otg

So Vitalik was going to roll up a fucking quantum computer in his basement? Stand back physicists of the world! he’s got this. Yet people lined up to give him their money and again for Ethereum and again after the DAO was ripped a couple of assholes…

I guess it speaks volumes about the average person’s business acumen.

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Thanks, i’ve added some more Links.
I despise these Shitcoins and Scammers who ruin the whole “Blockchain” Market, they are in it for the quick Money not for the Innovation of Free (as in Freedom) Money.
Greedy “Investors” and clueless People keep these Scams alive, thats why i wanted to share this Info :slight_smile:

Hopefully we see a Shitcoin Crash soon and get the attention back to the Roots where Satoshi started…
Free, uncensorable, decentralized Money or Bitcoin

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