Keet: Tether’s P2P communication app built to survive internet shutdowns | CIO
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Reimagining online privacy<br>Innovation in peer-to-peer communication means new applications using a ‘holepunch protocol’ offer much greater privacy to users.<br>Sponsored by Tether
Keet: Tether’s P2P communication app built to survive internet shutdowns
BrandPost By Tether
28 May 20266 mins
P2P solutions like Keet and QVAC are reclaiming user control over communication.
Credit: Keet
One hundred and ninety-three in 41 countries: that is the reported figure on cases of social media shutdowns across Africa between 2016 and 2024. The subsequent years weren’t any better, with cases rising to 300 between 2024 and 2026. Each case affecting at least 10 million people: national stakeholders target platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook to curb democracy in contributions to national matters.
Away from Africa, censorship is a global issue and affects the highest levels of civilization and technological advancement. Cases of strategic user limitation have been reported across Europe, Asia, and the Americas; a perfect representation of the depth of censorship worldwide.
Beyond censorship, server failures are also implicated in what is now known as unintentional deplatforming. For example, there have been AWS, Oracle, and Cloudflare data center outages and more than 4 cases in the first three months of 2026.
While UNESCO and the #keepiton movement continue to advocate for social freedom and against intentional deplatforming, the inherent design of the internet and social applications is the greatest enabler of censorship.
Deplatforming mostly takes a ‘provider’ route: blocking via DNS/IP restrictions, suspending internet gateways, GPS spoofing/jamming for ISP satellites, removal from app stores, and DPI throttling make up a long list. Apparently, providers’ control over the core communication infrastructure threatens the usability of social tools for the billions who rely on them.
The ‘unstoppable web’; an optimistic vision of the internet, championed by applications that solve the centralization problem by excising providers and supporting usage by millions of users, is a view held to the core by Tether. ‘The stable project’ is weaving the fabrics of financial, communication, and technological sovereignty with integrated solutions.
On July 25, 2022, Tether launched Keet, a distributed social messaging application built with the Pear runtime. A collaborative effort between the stablecoin firm and Holepunch, Keet combines a self-verifying data structure, a P2P file management protocol, and holepunching technology, each forming layers of a hyper-efficient system that creates tamper-proof connections between millions of devices.
The technology that underlies Keet is a counter-response to deplatforming and the centralized internet. It does not rely on servers to operate, and turns users into infrastructure, creating a connectivity web that serves as a substrate for billions of users in an unstoppable flow of communication.
The Keet application has been downloaded over a million times across Google Play Store, iOS App Store, and as a native desktop application. Commenting on the application’s growing popularity, Tether CEO, Paolo Ardoino, said;
“Keet is gaining significant traction. Especially in countries where freedom of speech is under attack, and the most common messaging platforms are no longer trusted by the local population. Pure P2P is unstoppable.”
Keet supports text and video-based communication. Just like popular centralized social apps, it supports personal and group chats, lets you create channels, host group calls, and make crystal-clear video calls.
Untethering the internet from ‘providers’ with Holepunch
Holepunch is the connectivity layer of the Keet application. It is Tether’s solution to centralization in communication that plagues both human and AI agents. As a base layer for cutting-edge applications, it is purpose-built for a broad range of use cases and employs a peer-based development and operational approach.
Holepunch establishes secure, tamper-proof inter-device communication using HyperDHT, a distributed hash table based on the Kademlia algorithm that serves as the global...