Sentinel is a decentralized network that facilitates the exchange of distributed resources — bandwidth, computing power and storage. Starting with bandwidth, the Sentinel dVPN has been released as the first dApp on the network.

Readers who are just discovering Sentinel are encouraged to first check out the official Medium profile. Also, crypto analytics-focused organisation Fundamint has recently completed an independent and in-depth fundamental analysis that reviews Sentinel from an unbiased third party perspective.

The Vision

Sentinel’s vision is to facilitate the creation of a p2p network focused on secure networking and the exchange of resources and services between multiple peers. The Sentinel Network is designed to be powered by community based resource and service providers and a decentralized validator consensus that governs the network & ensures resource exchange provability.

Sentinel’s vision is to make a profound impact globally; from the general internet user who might wish to access an email client that is restricted in the country they happen to be in, to the user who wishes to chat or transfer files securely with confidence that their data is not viewable to any third party. Sentinel also aims to make an impact with corporate users who value provability and the provenance of the back-end functions of applications intended to manage sensitive corporate communications and data exchange.

The ‘Private Networks’ feature has already been completed and the code base and functionality will soon be released, allowing anyone to setup their own ‘Private Network’ on Sentinel. Users and enterprises/communities alike will be able to host dVPN nodes and encrypt the access to their own personal ‘Private Network’ which can be used for trustless communication and access to the Internet. No longer do users have to be dependent on centralised and non-transparent VPN service providers when they are traveling and accessing public networks (e.g airport/hotel), users can now host their own nodes on their local system or by using a trusted VPS provider and privately access this personal network.

For Sentinel to truly penetrate the mainstream and reach millions of users and thousands of organisations, one of the most crucial milestones is the integration of a holistic payment gateway that facilitates the easy conversion of fiat into crypto. The economy of the Sentinel Network is centered around the consumption of resources and although it is integral to the network, the user base of the network’s resources cannot be restricted to payment in the network’s native token, SENT.

Sentinel looks forward to the integration of crypto-fiat payment gateway service providers such as E-Money with Sentinel dApps. These payment gateways will allow the general retail user who does not transact in crypto to pay for services on the Sentinel network with the use of a credit card or another common method of retail payment. With the use of the Cosmos IBC network, fiat stable coins and a large number of cryptocurrencies can also seamlessly be exchanged for bandwidth resource on the Sentinel network.

Sentinel’s initial prototype network has already proven its ability to provide a stable prototype of the intended services to thousands of active users and now as the network transitions to its native Tendermint blockchain, the focus will largely include the creation of a robust and tangible crypto economy.

Sentinel’s Progress in Q1 2019

Below are Sentinel’s accomplishments/milestones achieved since the beginning of 2019:

Participated in & was declared an Uptime Leader in the Comsos Network — Game of Stakes (GOS) Launched the Sentinel Tendermint Testnet (STT) v1.1 along with the Desktop Client v0.1.0 (with dVPN on the Sentinel Tendermint Testnet) Sentinel Network exchanged (contributed & consumed) more than 18,755.91 GB (or ~18.76 TB) in download and 2157.32 GB (or ~2.16 TB) in upload bandwidth through it’s clients — Desktop & Mobile (Android only), bringing the total data consumed by the network to ~46 TB. ‘Sentinel Free VPN’ Android app enters the ’50 Most Popular VPN’ category on Google Play with over 20K downloads in the last few months with thousands of active users per day Sentinel successfully started running a Validator for the IRISHub — which is a Hub on the Cosmos Network, similar to the Cosmos Hub

Sentinel’s Roadmap for Q2 & Q3 2019

For those that are lazy to read the roadmap, here is a video that you can watch. If not, you have the text below the video