In late 2025, Afghanistan experienced a near-total internet blackout lasting approximately 48 hours. This sudden shutdown affected an estimated 13 million people and brought to light a major vulnerability in the world of decentralized blockchain technologies: their dependence on centralized internet infrastructure.
While Taliban officials later attributed the outage to technical issues involving fiber optic cables, multiple reports suggest the blackout was a government-ordered shutdown. Regardless of the cause, the result was the same—millions of Afghans were cut off from the global internet, effectively freezing access to blockchain services like cryptocurrency wallets, decentralized apps, and online financial platforms.
Why Centralized Internet is a Problem for Decentralized Tech
One of the core promises of blockchain technology is decentralization—offering financial freedom, censorship resistance, and user empowerment. However, these ideals fall apart when access to the internet is controlled by a small number of centralized providers.
The Afghanistan incident is a clear example. Without internet access, blockchain networks—even those that are fully decentralized—become unusable to end-users. This reveals a critical weakness: if a government or a single point of failure in the infrastructure can disconnect people, then the entire decentralized ecosystem is at risk.
Such shutdowns aren’t new, but this was the first to occur nationwide under Taliban rule, signaling potential for future disruptions. It shows that even the most advanced decentralized technologies still rely heavily on vulnerable infrastructure.
The Rise of Decentralized Connectivity Solutions
To address this issue, innovators are turning their attention toward decentralized connectivity. Projects like Roam Network are working on building decentralized wireless networks by crowdsourcing mobile signal data. The idea is to create a more resilient internet layer that operates independently from traditional telecom companies.
These networks use peer-to-peer connections and blockchain incentives to encourage users to share and extend connectivity. In emergency situations, or even full-scale shutdowns, such systems could keep people connected to critical services, including decentralized financial platforms and secure communication tools.
Advocates of decentralized internet infrastructure argue that without it, the full potential of blockchain will never be realized. Blockchain needs an equally distributed and censorship-resistant way to access it—something traditional internet providers simply can’t guarantee.
