Afghanistan’s 48-Hour Internet Blackout Exposes Blockchain’s Centralization Paradox

Afghanistan plunged into digital darkness last week as a 48-hour nationwide internet blackout revealed one of blockchain’s most overlooked weaknesses — its dependence on centralized internet infrastructure.

The shutdown, which began in late September, left around 13 million Afghans offline and silenced virtually all forms of digital communication. While officials under Taliban rule claimed “technical issues” with fiber optic cables, international reports pointed to a deliberate government-ordered shutdown — the first nationwide blackout since the Taliban regained control.

Beyond cutting citizens off from information, the incident sent shockwaves through the Web3 community, exposing a painful truth: even the most decentralized blockchains remain useless without access to the centralized systems that power the internet itself.

A Wake-Up Call for Decentralization

“The Afghanistan blackout is not just a regional connectivity crisis — it is a wake-up call,” said Michail Angelov, co-founder of Roam Network, a decentralized WiFi platform. “When connectivity is monopolized by a handful of providers, the promise of blockchain can collapse overnight.”

The episode underscored an uncomfortable irony for blockchain advocates: technologies built to resist censorship still rely on infrastructure that can be shut down at will. Despite years of innovation, most users connect to blockchains through internet service providers controlled by governments or large telecoms — the same gatekeepers blockchain was meant to outgrow.

Afghanistan isn’t alone. Similar digital blackouts have struck other nations grappling with unrest or censorship. In June, the Iranian government restricted global internet access for nearly two weeks amid escalating regional tensions, allowing only state-approved domestic apps to operate. Millions of Iranians resorted to hidden proxy links just to stay online.

These shutdowns illustrate how easily centralized control over the internet can undermine blockchain’s core promises of global access and financial autonomy.

DePIN Projects Aim to Fill the Connectivity Gap

In response, developers are accelerating efforts to decentralize not just finance but also physical infrastructure through DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks). These projects aim to distribute internet access the same way blockchains distribute data — across many nodes rather than a few corporate servers.

Roam, for instance, is building a smartphone-powered wireless network that crowdsources signal data to create a live, self-updating “connectivity map.” Its upcoming eSIM technology will allow devices to automatically switch between public carriers, private mesh networks, and peer-to-peer local connections — potentially bypassing centralized choke points during outages.

Other players are also scaling quickly. World Mobile, the largest decentralized wireless network, reports 2.3 million daily active users across more than 20 countries. Meanwhile, Helium Network boasts over 112,000 mobile hotspots in 190 countries, rewarding individuals with HNT tokens for providing coverage.

For Web3’s grand vision of censorship resistance to succeed, advocates argue that decentralization must extend beyond the blockchain itself. Without decentralized access to the internet, even the most secure distributed ledgers remain vulnerable to the flip of a switch.

As Angelov warned, “If decentralization stops at the protocol layer, we haven’t really solved the problem — we’ve just shifted where the control lies.”

A Revolution Still Plugged Into the Old World

Afghanistan’s blackout was more than a temporary disruption — it was a stress test for the entire decentralized movement. Blockchain may have freed users from banks and governments in the financial sense, but it still lives within their digital borders.

Until the world builds internet infrastructure that is as distributed and censorship-resistant as the blockchains running on top of it, decentralization will remain an unfinished revolution — one that can still be silenced with a single command.