This grant is to support helping Iranians access the internet and online software services. Providing support to Iranians for internet freedom was recently explicitly encouraged by the U.S Treasury with the publication of the Iran General License D-2.
For context, internet in Iran has been shut down recently to prevent Iranians from coordinating around protests and from publicizing the injustices of the regime. For more information, please see the statement by the U.S. State Department as well as the excellent Amnesty International website dedicated to the topic.
Funds raised will be used to purchase and distribute VPN vouchers, starlinks systems, and other general infrastructure to help Iranians stay connected to the internet. Funds will also be used to help sustain allies who have been offering such support at their own personal expense.
We are forming a working group of relevant experts and donors to determine the most impactful use of funds.
This grant was inspired by Morteza Esmailpour’s fundraising campaign on gofundme, which was shut down unceremoniously by gofundme in an example of sanctions over-compliance. We are actively seeking to make contact with Morteza and help facilitate his Internet Freedom fundraiser with this grant proposal. We are also happy to work with other Internet Freedom experts or simply use our best judgement to determine where the distribute the funds to maximize impact.
If you have suggestions for good grantees who are currently supporting Internet Freedom for Iranians or have done great work already and deserve a retroactive reward, please comment below.
If you donate or have relevant expertise, please post in our public telegram group to request access to our Internet Freedom working group.
Just found this useful dashboard from censoredplanet.org project that shows which websites are filtered/censored in different countries, with a pretty good technical breakdown of the networks, etc:
One potential concern with the proposal is the reference to retroactively rewarding allies who have been offering support at their own personal expense. While this could be a way to recognize and incentivize contributions to the cause, it’s worth noting that retroactive rewards can be subject to bias and may not align with clear criteria for funding allocation. Therefore, it would be important to have a transparent and fair process for determining which allies are eligible for retroactive rewards.
Free Internet for Iran is a recently established group that consists of international lawyers, attorneys, activists, and IT experts.
The aim of this group is through legal means, to prevent the regime’s proxy companies outside of Iran from filtering, restriction, and complete internet shutdown for the people in Iran. The regime would not be able to conduct an internet shutdown and severe restrictions without assistance from companies outside the country. They create external links/infrastructure so when the government shuts down the internet for the people, the governmental organizations and banks won’t run into connectivity issues.
Our mission is to locate these companies, operative outside Iran, and to legally stop their operations based on the “Free Flow of Information Act” in developed countries. This is done through intelligence gathering, legal lobbying, and reporting fake shell companies to international bodies:
Research & Data gathering
Intelligence data gathering and insider information
The Game of Trust aims to create a secure community of Iranian individuals who oppose the current regime while keeping everyone’s identity anonymous, enabling communication, discussions on diverse topics, and coordination.
Since enough funds are gathered in this grant to support the second candidate, we have initiated the transfer transaction from the grant safe to the working group multisig: DAOhaus Admin
