NordVPN Shuts Down Its Innovative Meshnet Feature, Leaving a Void for Crypto Users
NordVPN has announced it will discontinue its Meshnet feature on December 1st. The shutdown will render all aspects of the service inoperable, though the company stresses that its core VPN product will remain unaffected. For the crypto community and power users who relied on Meshnet for secure, peer-to-peer connections, this news means finding a new solution before the year’s end.
Meshnet was a standout feature in the VPN landscape. It allowed users to create a private, encrypted network between their own devices or with trusted friends without routing traffic through a central server. This was achieved using NordVPN’s proprietary NordLynx tunnel. The utility for crypto enthusiasts was significant. It provided a secure method to access a remote hardware wallet, manage a node from a different location, or share sensitive files directly between machines with a high degree of confidence in the connection’s privacy and security. The ability to do all this for free made it an even more attractive tool.
The discontinuation highlights a common challenge in tech: innovative features sometimes fail to achieve mainstream adoption. NordVPN’s blog post indicated that Meshnet never found its intended audience. While incredibly valuable for a niche group of tech-savvy individuals and those with specific professional or crypto-related needs, its benefits did not resonate with the broader VPN user base, who primarily use these services for personal privacy and accessing geo-restricted content. Features like remote desktop access and secure file sharing leaned more towards business applications, a market NordVPN seems to be stepping back from with this decision.
For users now seeking alternatives, the clock is ticking. Those wishing to remain within the Nord ecosystem for file sharing can transition to NordLocker, which offers 3GB of free encrypted cloud storage. However, this is a cloud-based solution, not a direct peer-to-peer replacement. For the critical function of recreating a secure, encrypted mesh network for device-to-device communication, NordVPN itself recommends ZeroTier. This platform allows users to connect up to 10 devices on a private network for free, making it a potential successor for managing crypto nodes or other hardware remotely.
The loss of Meshnet is a blow to users who valued its unique blend of ease-of-use and powerful, direct encryption. Its departure serves as a reminder of the volatility of relying on free, ancillary services from companies whose primary focus lies elsewhere. The search for a equally convenient and secure replacement begins now.
The article originally appeared on Engadget.