VPN Unlimited on Protecting Freedom, Beating Censorship, and Next-Gen VPN Protocols in 2026
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Key Takeaways
- VPN Unlimited is implementing a new VPN protocol in 2026 to enhance connectivity, anti-censorship capabilities, and resistance to blocking attempts.
- The service expands user empowerment through the KeepSolid Rewards program, allowing users to earn and spend KS Coin cryptocurrency for VPN access.
- Traffic obfuscation focuses on blending VPN traffic with regular HTTPS, helping protect against traffic correlation, fingerprinting, and AI-driven traffic analysis.
- Ongoing development prioritizes censorship-resistant connectivity, particularly for users in authoritarian regions, while operational security and human-centered resilience maintain service reliability.
In an era where governments tighten online restrictions and AI-driven monitoring grows increasingly sophisticated, staying connected safely is more challenging than ever. For VPN Unlimited, 2026 is shaping up to be a year of strategic upgrades and user-centered innovation.
In our conversation with Vasyl Ivanov, Founder and CEO of KeepSolid, he highlighted how lessons from past challenges, including operating under extreme conditions and supporting users in restrictive regions, are driving smarter, more resilient design choices. From new VPN protocols to traffic obfuscation that blends seamlessly with regular HTTPS, every step is guided by one principle: freedom without compromise.
With initiatives like the KeepSolid Rewards program and continued efforts to provide connectivity in authoritarian countries, VPN Unlimited is proving that protecting user freedom isn’t just a feature, it’s a mission.
This interview explores VPN Unlimited’s 2026 roadmap, showing how the company balances cutting-edge privacy technology with practical usability, operational resilience, and a commitment to keeping the internet open for everyone.
Rachita Jain: What is the main technical goal your VPN is pursuing in 2026, and what concrete changes, such as new features, cryptographic mechanisms, or architectural shifts, are you launching to achieve it? Why is this necessary now?
Our focus, as usual, is on users' freedom. As pressure on internet freedom is rising, we plan to upgrade our technology and infrastructure. This winter/spring, we will add a new VPN protocol.
The other goal is to provide users with a vpn in authoritarian countries, but keep them in equivalent exchange with, so today we already published the KeepSolid Rewards program, which allows users to be rewarded with crypto (KS Coin) by referring other people to VPN Unlimited and use this crypto to pay for VPN.
Definitely, we have many more plans, especially to upgrade our Passwarden password manager, but VPN is the priority.
Rachita Jain: Which specific lessons from past VPN breaches, audits, or law-enforcement cases are directly shaping your 2026 architecture, product design, or feature roadmap? What decisions would you not have made five years ago?
Vasyl Ivanov: Well, technically, a VPN should not save personalized logs to be open to the dialog with any government on one hand, and to keep customers always anonymous on the other hand. This has been done for us for many years. Some users have concerns that our HQ is based in New York, and I can respond to this notice: when we store zero personal logs, we have nothing to show, regardless of government requests. But when you use a VPN registered in the hidden islands, which store user information in data centers where servers can be removed from the rack for investigation, you have to think twice about which solution is better.
But the main lesson I prepared for is people. I mean, people who work hand in hand with me to build a product. I know what I’m talking about because not only has a competition or confrontation with oppressive governments affected us over the past years, but also the war in Ukraine, where most of our employees were located.
We had to deal with many technical issues, including our employees working under the rocket attack and with limited internet and electricity. Just imagine how they were filled themselves compared to Western employees who simply burn out at work.
So, yes, the main lesson is people.
Rachita Jain: If one of your VPN servers were compromised today, what user information could realistically be inferred, and how do the concrete changes planned for 2026, including infrastructure or feature changes, further reduce that exposure?
Vasyl Ivanov: As I said earlier, there are no personal logs, only the data specified in the privacy policy.
Rachita Jain: Beyond encrypting payloads, what concrete steps are you taking in 2026 to defend against traffic correlation, fingerprinting, and timing attacks, and how do these protections affect real-world users?
That is a permanent work for a VPN service. We improve the connection; they try to block our users. We apply a new VPN protocol; they try to block our users. That’s the game. That’s why we're working on implementing a new VPN protocol right now and will see what the next challenge is.
Rachita Jain: As censorship, deep packet inspection, and AI-driven traffic analysis improve in 2026, what specific techniques are you deploying to make VPN traffic harder to identify or classify, and are any of these changes user-configurable or enabled by default?
Vasyl Ivanov: The better we can hide under a regular https traffic, the better our connection will work. But we can play this game until the internet is physically turned off, like in Iran in January.
Rachita Jain: How are you changing abuse-prevention, fraud-detection, and operational monitoring systems in 2026 to avoid creating hidden logs, persistent identifiers, or long-lived behavioral profiles?
Vasyl Ivanov: We work with this on our servers and within applications, but unfortunately, we cannot influence other programs on the user's computer, and that is why protection depends on the user's conscious actions.
Rachita Jain: Several governments are openly restricting or blocking VPN use. In 2026, are you changing how your network detects, routes around, or responds to blocking attempts, and where do you draw the line between legal compliance and technical resistance?
Vasyl Ivanov: We are not under the jurisdiction of countries that impose strict internet blocking, and therefore, we provide free communication to our users. But we are still working on new protocols to help people from other countries.
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