Hyphanet, formerly Freenet, is an open-source peer-to-peer network for censorship-resistant publishing. See its 2026 features, licensing and alternatives.
Hyphanet is a free, open-source peer-to-peer network for censorship-resistant, anonymous publishing and communication. It is the direct continuation of the Freenet project, renamed in mid-2023, and traces its origins to 1999, when Ian Clarke designed the system as a student project at the University of Edinburgh.
Clarke and collaborators formalized the design in a widely cited 2001 academic paper, and the network moved into practical use around 2000, making Hyphanet one of the oldest anonymous peer-to-peer systems still actively maintained today.
There is no company behind Hyphanet. It is developed by a volunteer, open-source community and has never taken venture funding or operated as a commercial product; its software is released under the GNU General Public License version 3.
Hyphanet works as a decentralized distributed data store: every node contributes disk space and bandwidth to the network, and files are split into encrypted blocks and distributed redundantly across many nodes rather than hosted on a single server.
Content is addressed with cryptographic keys, Content Hash Keys for static content and Signed Subspace Keys for content a publisher wants to update over time, enabling freesites, static websites that cannot be taken down by targeting one host.
Two connectivity modes serve different needs: opennet connects automatically to other users for ease of use, while darknet restricts connections to manually added, trusted friends, trading convenience for stronger resistance to surveillance and infiltration.
Hyphanet is entirely free to download and run. There is no subscription, license fee or paid tier; users only need to install the Java-based node software and contribute some local disk space and bandwidth to participate in the network.
The project accepts voluntary donations to support ongoing development, but donating is optional and does not unlock any additional features, consistent with Hyphanet's identity as a non-commercial, community-run project.
Yes, Hyphanet is the renamed continuation of the original Freenet project, rebranded in mid-2023; a separate, unrelated project now uses the Freenet name.
Ian Clarke created the original Freenet as a student project at the University of Edinburgh in 1999.
Yes, Hyphanet is free, open-source software released under the GNU General Public License version 3.
It encrypts and splits content across a distributed network of user-run nodes, using cryptographic keys for routing so no single node knows the full picture of who published or requested content.
Opennet connects automatically to other Hyphanet users for ease of use, while darknet only connects to manually added, trusted friends for stronger resistance to surveillance.
Users can publish censorship-resistant static websites called freesites, participate in anonymous forums and messaging, and share files without relying on a central server.