During the Internet blackout winter, Iranians connect with the world via decentralized technologies.

By: Liam Kelly

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

Since early January, Iran has suffered a large-scale internet blackout—but some resourceful individuals have begun using decentralized technologies to reconnect with the outside world.

During this month’s severe internet shutdown in Iran, Darius managed to send a brief message via Telegram during a fleeting window of connectivity.

“They’re afraid of videos protesters upload online, so they’ve turned off all streetlights,” he shared with the Persian-language community Sentinel on January 14. He is a long-standing member of the group.

“People can only walk using their phone flashlights—everything is terrible. They’ve even broken North Korea’s record for censorship.”

This came roughly one week after violent protests erupted following the collapse of the Iranian rial—the national currency.

Since then, Darius has continuously cycled through various network routing tools—including Sentinel’s decentralized virtual private network (dVPN)—to bypass the government’s stringent communications blockade.

The tools he relies on include:

OpenVPN: A widely used tool that conceals users’ IP addresses;

Shadowsocks: Based on the SOCKS5 protocol, it disguises network traffic as random data;

V2Ray: Masks users’ true identities by leveraging security certificates from legitimate websites.

In exclusive information provided to DL News, he described daily life under a violent regime amid near-total internet disconnection.

“We live in hell—no internet, no money, no media, no support whatsoever,” wrote Darius—using a pseudonym to protect his identity—on January 14. “We need help. People cannot fight back barehanded while they shoot us with shotguns and AK-47s.”

The Digital Iron Curtain

On January 8, Iran’s government imposed its most severe communications blackout in nearly 50 years of rule—targeting ongoing protests that began in December last year and have since spread beyond the capital Tehran.

Adam Burns, co-founder of the Australian Internet Association, said the move served two purposes.

“This is standard communications control: primarily aimed at disrupting protest organization and preventing international exposure,” he told DL News. “At its core, it’s risk management.”

During this period, decentralized networks and traffic obfuscation tools became vital lifelines for citizens.

Reports indicate that up to 90% of Iranians have used some form of circumvention tool to access the outside world since last August.

Such networks are typically more resilient than centralized ones—which rely on a single database or point of failure. To dismantle a decentralized network, authorities would need to shut down each self-hosted node individually—or impose a nationwide total internet blackout.

Other tools, such as SpaceX’s distributed satellite network Starlink—owned by Elon Musk—have also become critical communication channels. Because systems like Starlink lack a single local node, their distributed infrastructure can still provide essential connectivity—even under intense censorship.

Yet reports note that such widespread internet restrictions cost the country billions of dollars in economic losses.

“By providing decentralized, highly resilient internet access capable of withstanding even the most aggressive censorship, we help keep information flowing—and enable courageous people inside Iran to document and share the violence hidden behind the blackout,” Aleksandr Litreev, CEO of Sentinel, told DL News.

Of course, no network functions reliably under a complete blackout.

Still, during blackouts, citizens like Darius can seize brief windows of connectivity—when the regime must balance silencing criticism against maintaining economic functionality.

“It’s an endless game of cat and mouse,” Burns said.

Using his suite of tools, Darius disguises his network requests as ordinary traffic directed toward major Iranian e-commerce sites—kept online by the government for economic reasons. These encrypted data packets are then tunneled to overseas servers accessible to the global internet.

This method isn’t foolproof nor sustainable—but it allows Darius to send a few Telegram messages during those fleeting connectivity windows.

“Once traffic patterns reveal unauthenticated connections, they’re cut off immediately,” Darius wrote on January 23.

Chaos in Iran

Over the past four weeks, Iran has descended into full-blown chaos.

On December 28, Iranians gathered at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar to protest the government’s handling of the currency collapse. By late 2025, the Iranian rial hit an all-time low—reaching 1.4 million rials per U.S. dollar—driven largely by harsh international sanctions and mismanagement by Iran’s leadership. U.S. sanctions aim to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program and curb its support for terrorist groups including Hezbollah and the Houthis.

“It’s like holding a junk coin listed only on isolated exchanges—its value drops daily until you’re forced to buy basic necessities like milk and meat with something utterly worthless,” Darius wrote. “Worse still, the same items cost even more the next day.”

Iran is a theocracy, with ultimate authority vested in Supreme Leader and cleric Ali Khamenei. Although Iran holds elections for president and parliament, their powers remain severely constrained. Citizens have long criticized the regime—but the rial’s collapse fundamentally changed the situation.

“Generally speaking, people don’t revolt for lofty ideals like democracy or universal suffrage—they resist over issues that directly impact daily life,” Tallha Abdulrazaq, researcher at the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute, told DL News. “As long as basic needs are met and people retain hope for the future, many will tolerate authoritarian rule.”

Following the January 8 blackout, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia began using live ammunition to forcibly disperse protesters.

Due to the internet blackout, on-the-ground citizens and multiple human rights organizations struggled to verify casualty figures. The Iran Human Rights organization reported at least 3,428 deaths; Iran International—a Persian-language news outlet based in London—cited internal documents from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and the Presidential Office claiming at least 12,000 fatalities. Two senior officials from Iran’s Ministry of Health told Time magazine that up to 30,000 people may have died between January 8 and 9.

As for toppling the regime, Abdulrazaq believes it is virtually impossible without international intervention. “The Iranian government may underfund public services—but it spends massively on security institutions. Without external support, I see no path for these protests to overthrow the Iranian regime,” he said.