• The Creator: The Man Who Was There at the Beginning
• How It Works: No Central Server, No Company in the Middle
• Availability: In Active Development
• Why This Is Different
• Conclusion: The Same Philosophy, A New Layer

Martti Malmi, the first developer to work alongside Bitcoin’s creator, shipped a peer-to-peer VPN with no central corporate server, no traditional accounts, and no intermediaries. The project is live and in active development.

There is a name that rarely appears in Bitcoin’s history books, yet was present at the very beginning. Martti Malmi — known in the crypto world by the pseudonym “Sirius” — was Satoshi Nakamoto’s first collaborator, from 2009 to 2011. He designed Bitcoin’s first graphical user interface, co-managed Bitcoin.org, and received from Satoshi one of the earliest peer-to-peer transactions in the network’s history.

Now, more than a decade later, Malmi is back with a project that carries the same philosophy as Bitcoin: reducing dependence on intermediaries. This time, in the world of VPNs.

In May 2026, he shipped the latest version of Nostr VPN — a decentralized virtual private network built on the Nostr protocol, with no central corporate server, no email registration, and no account tied to any third party.

§The Creator: The Man Who Was There at the Beginning

To understand the weight of what Malmi is building, you need to understand who he is.

In 2009, when Bitcoin was nothing more than a whitepaper and a handful of nodes running on anonymous machines, Malmi was the first person beyond Satoshi himself to actively contribute to the project. He did not just write code — he built the bridge between Bitcoin and the world: designed the first functional graphical interface, helped structure Bitcoin.org as a central information hub, and participated in the earliest technical and philosophical discussions about what that network could become.

Satoshi trusted him with responsibilities few received. Malmi co-administered the project during a period when every decision shaped what Bitcoin would become. His vision has always been aligned with one core principle: systems that work without needing to trust central authorities.

That is exactly the vision behind Nostr VPN.

§How It Works: No Central Server, No Company in the Middle

Traditional VPNs are simple to understand — and problematic to accept: you install the app, create an account, pay a subscription, and route all your internet traffic through servers controlled by a company. You trade exposure to your internet provider for exposure to that company. The promised privacy depends entirely on how much you trust them.

Nostr VPN challenges that logic.

The architecture is mesh — a peer-to-peer model inspired by projects like Tailscale, where devices connect directly to each other without relying on a central corporate server. That function is distributed among the participants themselves.

User identity is not an email or an account. It is a Nostr public key — the same type of cryptographic identity used in decentralized social network protocols. If you already have a Nostr key pair, no additional registration is required.

For the encrypted data tunnel, the project uses WireGuard through the Rust implementation boringtun — considered one of the modern and efficient implementations for VPNs.

Device discovery and signaling — the process by which two nodes find each other to establish a connection — is handled through Nostr relays. These relays participate in network coordination, but the traffic content remains encrypted between nodes. The architecture significantly reduces the need to trust a centralized company, though some degree of trust in the distributed infrastructure still exists.

For cases where direct device connections fail — common in networks with restrictive NAT — Nostr VPN implements FIPS neighbor routing, using intermediate nodes when direct UDP connections are not possible.

More importantly: the exit node — the point in the network where traffic leaves toward the public internet — can be operated by the user themselves, at home or on a VPS of their choice. Whoever controls their own exit node does not need to delegate that trust to a VPN company.

The code is open-source under the MIT license, written in Rust with a frontend in Tauri and Svelte. Releases cover macOS Apple Silicon, Windows x64, Linux x64/arm64, and Android arm64. iOS has code in the repository but no published artifact yet. Intel macOS is source-only.

The project also implements MagicDNS, allowing devices in the mesh network to be found by name rather than just by IP address.

One detail that goes unnoticed in most coverage: the Android app is not on Google Play. It is available on Zapstore — the app store of the Nostr and Bitcoin ecosystem. And the canonical repository is not on GitHub. Main development happens at git.iris.to, using the htree:// protocol — hash tree-based content distribution, verifiable by design. GitHub is just a mirror. Even version control escapes centralized infrastructure.

§Availability: In Active Development

This is not vaporware. The public repository shows consistent development and frequent releases. The software can already be used, audited, and contributed to by the community.

§Why This Is Different

The difference between Nostr VPN and a commercial VPN is not only technical — it is philosophical.

Commercial VPNs reduce exposure to your internet provider, but require trust in a central company. Nostr VPN seeks to redistribute that trust among network participants and allow users to control critical parts of the infrastructure.

The trade-off is real: setup is more technical, the network depends on user participation, and support is community-driven. For those seeking immediate simplicity, traditional VPNs remain more accessible. For those who prioritize technological sovereignty and control over their own infrastructure, this project takes a different approach.

§Conclusion: The Same Philosophy, A New Layer

Bitcoin was born from a question: what happens when you remove the intermediary from money?

Nostr VPN explores a similar question at the network layer: what happens when you reduce dependence on central companies to operate a VPN?

The analogy is not perfect, but the inspiration is clear.

And it is no coincidence that the person behind this initiative is someone who helped build Bitcoin when it was still just a radical idea about financial sovereignty.

Martti Malmi has not changed. He simply found a new layer where the same question remains relevant.

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