Warren VPN
Try the beta

Who controls what

Warren calls itself decentralized. Here is what genuinely is, and what stays under central control. Hiding the centralized pieces would backfire on the first incident.

Ownership

Warren is operated by the Warren team. A legal entity is being incorporated to carry the paid service, and its details will be published then. Whoever operates the VPN holds the little data that exists (expiry dates by key), so the structure that operates it is a privacy fact in its own right.

What is genuinely decentralized

  • Your identity: your wallet (BIP39 to Ed25519) is generated on your device, with no email and no server-side account. I can neither recover nor impersonate it.
  • Each exit server identity: every exit has its own key, stored off-repo, never shared.
  • The data plane: servers run an immutable image in RAM, and the tunnel survives an API outage. In time, third-party operators will be able to host an exit.

What is centrally controlled

  • The control-plane API (subscriptions, vouchers, the signed server list): a central service, not a decentralized one.
  • The release-signing key: held offline on the API box, it decides which binary the fleet accepts. It is a central trust root.
  • The shared team wallet (used by my internal tool): a shared convenience credential, not a user wallet and not the treasury.
  • The exit cover TLS certificate: a single, shared fleet certificate.
  • Who can sign and push a fleet update: maintainers with access to the API box and the signing key.

My directive: what I will never do

Never log user activity. Never introduce a payment intermediary that could see the wallet-to-subscription link. Never sell or monetize data. Never accept paid affiliation. And cease operating a server in any jurisdiction that would legally force me to surveil, rather than comply.

Isolation between subscribers

I hold it as a design invariant that no subscriber can be used to deanonymize another on the same server. This is the "Port Fail" attack class (2015), which shares its root cause with TunnelCrack (2023). My answer does not rely on a second IP address per server: it is handled on the client, at the tunnel socket, with a server-side filter as backup. Port forwarding itself stays free of any usage restriction.

No paid affiliation

The VPN industry is saturated with sponsored "Top 10" lists and bought reviews. Warren refuses paid affiliation and sponsored placement: I do not pay for reviews or ranking, and I do not run a commission-based affiliate program that would bias recommendations. It is the cheapest commitment to make now, before the temptation is high.