Step 1. Anchor Protocol
In Step 1 of VeilNet’s temporal topology formation, the Anchor Protocol enables the Rift to dynamically form a secure, anonymous path without exposing its identity. The Veil Master functions purely as a signaling relay channel, with no involvement in routing decisions, traffic handling, or data visibility. The Rift initiates the process by broadcasting a privacy-preserving query, which contains only a random ephemeral cryptographic signature—never the real IP, VeilNet IP, or any persistent identifier. This broadcast is received by distributed Portals, which collaboratively engage in a decentralized process based on distributed dynamic programming and reinforcement learning (AI) to compute an optimal path. For each unique destination, the network forms a distinct Egress and Exit Portal (last hop to the destination), selected based on real-time factors like load, latency, and anonymity requirements. Once the egress is established, the Rift initiates a logical stream, identified solely by a random Stream ID, and conducts an end-to-end post-quantum ML-KEM key exchange directly with the Exit Portal. This ensures that only the Rift and Exit Portal share the encryption keys, while intermediate Portals have zero knowledge of the content, session identity, or destination—they merely forward opaque encrypted packets based on the Stream ID. This architecture guarantees robust unlinkability, anonymity, and post-quantum security.
Step 2. Relay Circuit
Unlike Tor, where a circuit is pre-constructed before transmission and remains fixed for approximately 10 minutes, VeilNet’s relay architecture is fundamentally dynamic, decentralized, and packet-level adaptive. In VeilNet, the relay path is not bound to any static circuit—instead, it can change on a per-packet basis, dynamically selecting different Portal nodes on the fly according to real-time network conditions such as latency, load, and availability. Furthermore, VeilNet natively supports true simultaneous multi-path transmission, where encrypted traffic is intelligently distributed across multiple independent paths concurrently. This dramatically increases redundancy, throughput, and resistance to traffic analysis, making correlation or timing attacks exponentially harder compared to Tor’s fixed-path design.
A critical distinction is in the network visibility model. Tor operates over a public relay directory, meaning the entire network topology is exposed, allowing adversaries to map, monitor, or target nodes. By contrast, VeilNet’s overlay network is private, ephemeral, and undisclosed—Portals are neither publicly registered nor statically addressable. This ensures that the network topology is unobservable to external parties, significantly elevating resistance against surveillance, mapping, and targeted attacks.
Crucially, VeilNet does not operate on the outdated paradigm of “selecting a server” or “choosing a fixed route.” Instead, it places the entire decentralized network at your disposal, enabling the Rift to dynamically orchestrate any combination of Portals at any time, shifting paths fluidly or employing multiple paths in parallel. This creates a highly elastic privacy fabric where no single entity observes the full picture of the communication, delivering privacy, anonymity, and post-quantum security at a scale that static overlay networks like Tor or conventional VPNs are fundamentally incapable of achieving.
