Privacy and decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project ANYONE Protocol has unveiled its ambitious new product roadmap via an X post, detailing a full set of technical updates ranging from DePIN client upgrades to mass hardware sales. The roadmap demonstrates the team's aggressive pace in the privacy space since being removed from the Tor network in November 2023.
Background: Building a Trustless Privacy Layer
ANYONE aims to address one of the biggest global issues – internet privacy – by restoring trust for millions of users who feel increasingly tracked and monetized online. Unlike traditional VPNs, ANYONE is building a trustless privacy layer for the internet, tunneling traffic through chained VPN tunnels controlled by different people in a decentralized network, ensuring no single entity can track user activity. Their privacy network, Anon, is a global DePIN utilizing a novel Arweave distribution protocol to incentivize node (or ‘relay’) operators in real time for contributing bandwidth. Any operator with suitable hardware can run a node, but ANYONE has also released the ANYONE Router for non-technical users.
Three Parallel Streams: Network, Protocol & Token, and Hardware
The roadmap divides milestones into three parallel streams: Network Development, Protocol & Token, and Hardware Development. This structure highlights the multiple concurrent engineering teams maintained by ANYONE, most of which build completely open source, as well as their characteristic development speed. Since being removed from the Tor network in November 2023, the team has worked swiftly to create their own, more mainstream-focused onion routing network, forking the Tor network for every OS and releasing their hardware device for global shipping in just a few months. The new roadmap solidifies this competitive advantage and scales both network supply and demand.
Notable features include Anon SDK updates, with plans to release TypeScript, NPM, Python and mobile libraries. This comprehensive release will allow a wide range of developers to interface their applications directly with the network without needing to interact with Anon’s native-C client. It sets the stage for a wide ecosystem of privacy-focused projects and hackathons, putting ANYONE in the realm of other developer-active projects such as LINK and ANKR.
On the protocol side, the transition to AO reveals a previously unknown link between ANYONE and Arweave’s much-touted ‘global computer’ AO. With senior developer Jim Toth, co-author of Arweave’s atomic-assets standard, leading their protocol, a deeper integration with the permaweb has always been on the cards, and this roadmap point hints at what is to come.
Relay operators may find the new testnet rollout plan of interest, particularly the introduction of new reward metrics such as geolocation and uptime. Both hint at a push for a wider number of relay operators as opposed to concentrated, well-resourced ones. The geolocation point bears some resemblance to Helium ($HNT), which reserved higher rewards for operators in less competitive locations. With Helium co-founder Sean Carey advising the project, more parallels are certainly likely.
Later protocol roadmap points focus more on token function, with decentralized bandwidth authorities accompanied by ‘delegated staking for authorities’. As both the distribution testnet and this potential new staking feature go live, it would see far more utility and usage for the ANYONE token.
Perhaps most intriguing are some of the later network milestones – Enterprise custom circuit control and AI circuit agents. Both point to a far more sophisticated mechanism for users to route traffic through the network, and the mention of AI in particular opens a lot of questions around how much onion routing could be improved with the ability to optimize. These sharply contrast the more rigid approach seen in other privacy protocols, but with Tor contributors such as Benjamin Erhart incentivized to join the project, it could be the jumpstart the privacy space needs to hit the mainstream.
Finally, with a long waiting list for the next batch of ANYONE hardware routers, onlookers will be relieved to see a mass hardware sale on the cards. The new whitepaper will be released shortly, according to their latest AMA, to bring these parallel points together into a cohesive vision of privacy for ANYONE.