Project Brief
News and messaging over DNS — when everything else is taken away
When governments shut down the internet during protests, millions of people are cut off from the outside world overnight. They lose access to independent news, to their families abroad, and to any way of knowing what is actually happening around them.
TheFeed addresses both sides of this problem, and its core runs over DNS queries — the most basic and hardest-to-block layer of the internet. Over DNS it delivers independent news. Its encrypted messenger runs over DNS too, so people can send short text messages to contacts outside the country even during a total shutdown. And since October 2026, in beta, it carries Telegram itself over DNS: people sign in with their own account and keep their chats, groups and channels, with no VPN or proxy app. For times when Google is the only thing still reachable, TeleMirror offers yet another way in: it shows any Telegram channel through Google's services.
During these shutdowns, the tools people normally rely on stop working. VPNs become unaffordable — some sold for as much as $6 per gigabyte. Satellite internet carries severe legal risk: possession alone can lead to espionage charges. Even those who can afford circumvention tools face the constant threat of confiscation and prosecution.
Meanwhile, authorities maintain their own connectivity. Government-aligned operatives receive unrestricted SIM cards to spread propaganda, while ordinary people are left in an information vacuum — unable to verify rumors, contact loved ones, or document what they witness.
The existing censorship-circumvention tools all share a fundamental limitation: they try to establish a full TCP tunnel through the firewall. During a severe shutdown, this approach fails. DNS resolvers slow to a crawl, packet loss exceeds 80%, and establishing a reliable connection becomes nearly impossible. Tools like DNSTT, designed for DNS tunneling, require fast resolvers that take days of scanning to find — time people don't have.
On Thursday, January 8, 2026 (18 Dey 1404), on the twelfth day of nationwide protests in Iran, the government shut down the internet — the same day its forces killed large numbers of people. NetBlocks confirmed the total blackout at approximately 8:30 AM local time. Restrictions partially eased on January 28, but on February 28 — when the war began — the internet was cut completely again. This second phase lasted 88 days, until May 26. Combined, the disruption spanned nearly five months and became the longest nationwide internet shutdown ever recorded in any country, affecting 92 million people in Iran.
I had purchased expensive circumvention tools and managed to keep a fragile connection alive through VPNs. I was one of the few: about 90% of people had no connection at all, and only a small share had a VPN that still worked. But after weeks of instability, my last VPN went dead. I had no access to free news. The only remaining option was television — which was jammed with interference and propaganda. I didn't even own a TV.
I kept thinking: what if there was a protocol that could receive data gradually through DNS — not by trying to open a full tunnel, but by pulling content fragment by fragment? That would be fundamentally faster than tools like DNSTT, because it wouldn't need a persistent connection at all. It just needed to move text, piece by piece.
For several days, while my VPN was down, I refined the idea in my head. When my connection finally came back, I started building it immediately — with the help of AI coding tools, I worked until 4 in the morning. By dawn, I had a working prototype running on a server I owned abroad.
That same night, I shared TheFeed on GitHub and posted about it in several Telegram groups and under the comments of major channels. Then I went to sleep.
When I woke up, my VPN was dead again. This time it stayed down for three days. But something was different: I still had access to the news. My own tool was keeping me connected. The suffocating feeling of being a prisoner in an information blackout — it was gone.
And when I checked back online three days later, I found that people were already sharing TheFeed across their own channels.
From that first night onward, I worked on TheFeed around the clock — often 10 or more hours a day, with some sessions stretching past 20 hours — while simultaneously holding down an 8-hour day job. I would code during work breaks and through the nights, trying to sleep a few hours when I could. Speed mattered: I never knew when my VPN would go down again, so every window of connectivity was used to push updates.
Key milestones — all built and shipped while the shutdown was still ongoing:
Less than 1% of the population had access to Telegram during the shutdown. Those who did would download new versions of TheFeed and post them on Iranian forums, where the rest of the population could find them. This is how the project spread — organically, through people helping each other.
After GitHub became accessible from inside Iran, I added a GitHub relay feature. Users could download updates, configurations, and project news directly from within TheFeed — no separate browser or external tool needed.
TheFeed gave approximately 100,000 people access to independent news during Iran's 88-day internet shutdown. For many, it was their only window to the outside world.
The project demonstrated that DNS — the most basic and hardest-to-block layer of the internet — can serve as a viable channel for information delivery during the most severe censorship conditions.
TheFeed operates on a simple insight: even during total internet shutdowns, DNS resolution usually continues to function — because blocking it would break the government's own infrastructure. TheFeed exploits this by encoding content into DNS queries and responses.
When the internet was partially restored on May 26, I continued developing TheFeed. The threat of future shutdowns remains, and the tool needed to be ready — not as a wartime prototype, but as a mature, reliable application.
The first major addition since the shutdown was an encrypted messenger: a store-and-forward messaging system that works entirely over DNS. If the internet is cut again, people will be able to send short text messages to contacts outside the country — to tell their families they are safe, to coordinate, to stay human.
The second, released in beta in October 2026, is Telegram over DNS: a full Telegram client inside TheFeed. People sign in with their own Telegram account and keep using their own chats, groups and channels, with Telegram's protocol, MTProto, carried through ordinary DNS queries. When the way out is closed, they can still reach the people and channels they already rely on — without a VPN or a proxy app. The relay only moves Telegram's own encrypted packets and cannot read them.
Neither reached users during the shutdown. But both exist now, ready for the next time.
TheFeed is also applicable beyond Iran. Any population facing an internet shutdown — a pattern seen repeatedly across multiple regions — can deploy and use it.
Iran's internet shutdown begins on the twelfth day of nationwide protests — the day the government's forces killed large numbers of people. NetBlocks confirms total blackout at ~8:30 AM local time. 92 million people cut off.
Restrictions partially eased.
Total internet shutdown resumes as the war begins. This phase will last 88 days — the longest continuous nationwide internet blackout ever recorded.
After weeks of fragile VPN connectivity, my last circumvention tool goes dead. The idea for a DNS-based news protocol takes shape during the days that follow.
My VPN — one of the few still working — briefly reconnects. Prototype built in a single night — 5 versions released on day one. Published on GitHub and shared across Telegram groups. First users connect.
8 more versions on day two. Android app released (v0.1.1). End-to-end tests, auto-refresh, public server configurations deployed. Project spreads through Iranian forums. 19 releases in the first week.
Frontend rewrite, resolver bank, block verification, X (Twitter) public account support. GitHub becomes reachable from inside Iran, and a GitHub relay feature is added — users download updates and configs from within the app.
Media download via DNS queries and GitHub CDN relay shipped. Users can view photos, watch videos, and download new app versions — all from within TheFeed, all during the shutdown.
Google becomes reachable from inside Iran, and TeleMirror (Google relay) launches — users can follow any Telegram channel, not just pre-configured ones.
iOS app and macOS client released. TheFeed now runs on all major platforms — all shipped while the shutdown is still ongoing.
Internet partially restored after 2,093 hours. By this point: 90+ stable releases, 244 total versions, ~100,000 users served.
Encrypted DNS messenger built and tested. Feed signing (anti-tampering) and multi-domain support shipped. Saved Messages and storage management features added.
Telegram over DNS released in beta: a full Telegram client inside TheFeed. Users sign in with their own account and read and write their own chats, groups and channels. Telegram's own protocol, MTProto, is carried through DNS queries — no VPN, no proxy app. Text only, to stay usable on slow resolvers.
TheFeed began as an emergency tool. It has grown into something more: a platform for information resilience — one that can serve any population cut off from the open internet.
TheFeed is built and maintained by a solo developer who experienced the internet shutdown firsthand. The project was born out of personal necessity — not a grant proposal or an academic exercise — and its design reflects the real constraints of operating under severe censorship: unreliable connections, expensive and risky circumvention tools, and the constant possibility of losing access at any moment.
The developer continues to maintain and improve TheFeed full-time alongside a day job, with a commitment to keeping the project open-source and free for all users.