Rage-Coding the Mother of All VPNs: Notes from Iran's Internet Blackouts

Duration: NaN:NaN:NaN

Speaker: Shayan Eskandari

Type: Talk

Expertise: Some familiarity with the topic

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

"Cypherpunks write code." The manifesto promised censorship-resistant communication, and that code became Tor and Signal. Web3 inherited the same promise, then let VCs capture it: financial privacy has a business model, communications privacy for someone in Tehran does not. We built "decentralized" systems on an access layer we do not control, ten years on wallets, L2s and ZK while ignoring the chokepoint underneath: the ISPs and state-controlled fiber. Cut it and everything above vanishes. This is not Iran's problem alone. VPN demand spikes, the UK on an age-verification law, Russia now DDoS-ing VPNs, one outage at a time toward a global default. When Iran went dark I rage coded for months, defeat and all, down to a VPN config sung through a phone call with the error correction NASA flew past Pluto. The layers to build now: the last mile, offline payments, mesh, exotic routing. become the infrastructure, because a stranger with a spare box is what carries someone out.