Just this week San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase made Orchid (OXT) available on its platform. In tandem with this listing, Coinbase also made Orchid available as part of the Coinbase Earn program, which allows users to earn a nominal amount of a cryptocurrency after watching short instructional videos followed by a one-question quiz.

From the announcement,

“Coinbase customers can now buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store OXT. OXT will be available for customers in all Coinbase supported-regions, with the exception of New York state.”

Using a single VPN provider requires trust, and some VPN providers do collect and sell user data. This is often the case with “free VPNs”; their service is free, but they have hidden monetization strategies. Orchid changes all that.

Built on Ethereum, Orchid is a crypto-based, peer-to-peer privacy tool. According to their website, Orchid’s intent is to “help restore the open and accessible Internet for everyone.” Orchid believes in the mission of a decentralized Web 3.0. When using the Orchid app, a user’s mobile plan or local Wifi cannot track what the user is viewing, resulting in both privacy protection and a hidden digital data trail.

Orchid lists 6 core components of their network:

The Orchid app

OXT cryptocurrency

Orchid protocol

Nanopayments

Nodes

Staking

Orchid enables a decentralized virtual private network (VPN). Users earn OXT by sharing extra bandwidth and serve as nodes for the Orchid network. Users need to download the app, which allows them to buy Orchid using OXT from a decentralized network of sellers. For increased privacy, a user can also combine together multiple sellers’ bandwidth in what is known as a multi-hop route.

Founded in 2017, Orchid is based in San Francisco and Berlin. As of press time, OXT was Rank 2044 on CoinMarketCap with a price of $0.701693, 24h volume of $1.3 million, and a total supply of 1,000,000,000 OXT.