Founded in 2017 with a community-first mentality, Mysterium VPN  connects its customers to a global pool of over 7,500 residential IP addresses in 100 countries for reliable, secure, and undetectable connections. We caught up with Rytis Cicėnas, Commercial Director at Mysterium VPN, to discuss geopolitical realities, real-life AI, and what it means to take back the Internet.

i2Coalition: Can you give us the elevator pitch for Mysterium VPN?

Rytis Cicėnas: Mysterium VPN was created to offer total freedom. Built on a decentralized network of independent nodes around the world, it’s designed to give people real freedom and resilience online.

Instead of relying on a small number of centrally owned servers, it uses distributed, community-powered infrastructure that’s harder to censor, harder to block, and is more resistant to single points of failure. The result is a VPN that helps users protect their privacy, access an open Internet, and stay connected even in places where traditional services struggle or get restricted.

i2Coalition: Visitors to your website are met with a bold slogan: “Take Back the Internet”. Can you tell us how you arrived at this phrase?

RC: “Take Back the Internet” stemmed from a simple realization: the Internet was originally built to be open, resilient, and empowering, but over time, it has become increasingly centralized, monitored, and controlled. We saw more and more power concentrating in the hands of a few platforms, infrastructure providers, and gatekeepers, and with that came more censorship, more tracking, and more single points of failure. 

Our founder Robertas Visinskis’s background in Eastern Europe also shaped this thinking. There’s a very real, lived-in understanding of what it means when access to information can be restricted or manipulated.

So for us, “take back” is about giving users that power back: the power to choose where and how they connect, the power to access information freely, and the power to be less dependent on any single authority or company. It’s not just a slogan, it’s the very core of our mission to build a more open, user-owned, and resilient Internet.

i2Coalition: What impact do you think recent geopolitical events have had on your more recent growth?

RC: Geopolitical events have made the need for privacy, access, and resilience a reality for countless people. Whenever there are conflicts, protests, sanctions, or sudden restrictions on platforms and information, we see a clear increase in interest in VPNs and censorship-resistant tools in general.

For Mysterium VPN, this hasn’t just meant more users, but users who specifically care about reliability and independence from centralized infrastructure. When governments or regulators start blocking services, centralized systems are easier to pressure or shut down. A decentralized network, run by thousands of independent node operators around the world, is fundamentally harder to disrupt.

So while we’d obviously prefer to live in a world where these tools aren’t necessary, the reality is that recent geopolitical tensions have accelerated awareness of digital freedom issues and have reinforced why our approach to decentralization and user control matters.

i2Coalition: We probably have to talk about AI… how have developments in AI technology (business- and customer side) impacted your operations?

RC: AI has been more of an enabler than a transformation for us so far. We’re not positioning ourselves as an “AI-first” company, and we haven’t rebuilt our core product or operations around AI. Instead, we use it in very practical ways: to speed up research, to sanity-check and review code, and to make parts of our marketing and content workflows more efficient.

On the business side, that mainly shows up as productivity gains rather than a structural change. Teams can move faster, iterate more, and spend less time on repetitive tasks, but the fundamentals of how we build and run Mysterium VPN did not change because of AI. On the customer side, we’re also cautious. Privacy and trust are core to what we do, so we’re deliberate about where and how we would introduce AI into user-facing features.

i2Coalition: Why did your team find it important to join the i2Coalition?

RC: We joined the VPN Trust Initiative because we believe trust, transparency, and user protection can’t be built in isolation. The VPN space plays an increasingly important role in access to information, privacy, and security, and with that comes a responsibility to hold ourselves to clear, shared standards.

The VTI, under the i2Coalition, brings together providers who are willing to publicly commit to principles around privacy, security, transparency, and responsible conduct, and we see that as an important step for the entire industry.

For Mysterium VPN, this is also about contributing a decentralized perspective to that conversation. We’re building infrastructure that is designed to be more resilient to censorship and centralized pressure, and it’s important to us that this approach is understood and represented in broader industry and policy discussions. Being part of VTI allows us to work alongside other providers, engage with policymakers, and help raise the bar for what users should expect from VPN services, not just in terms of technology, but in terms of accountability and trust.

i2Coalition: Which i2Coalition initiatives connect most deeply with your team’s ethos?

RC: Several i2Coalition initiatives resonate strongly with our team’s ethos, especially those around trust, responsibility, and building a healthier Internet ecosystem. The VPN Trust Initiative is the most obvious example, because it reflects our focus on being grounded in reality, guided by a strong moral compass, and committed to responsibly empowering users. It’s about setting clear expectations, building trust through transparency, and taking real ownership of the role VPN providers play in people’s digital lives.

Beyond that, initiatives like the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative also connect closely with how we think about the Internet. They emphasize doing things the right way, not the easy way, and prioritizing long-term trust and healthy relationships over short-term gains.

More broadly, the collaborative working groups within i2Coalition reflect the same “sharp and united” mindset we value internally: bringing different minds together, constructively engaging with policies and industry, and taking proactive responsibility for how critical Internet infrastructure evolves. Overall, what connects us to these initiatives is the same set of principles we try to live by as a team: staying grounded, acting with integrity, working together, and taking clear ownership of the impact our technology has on the wider Internet.

i2Coalition: Where does government policy interface with your work on a daily basis?

RC: Government policy intersects with our work mostly at the infrastructure and access layer. Regulations around data protection, privacy, platform responsibility, and telecommunications shape how services like ours can operate: where infrastructure can be hosted, and how users’ rights are protected. On a practical level, this means we’re constantly tracking changes in regulatory frameworks across different regions and making sure our products and processes are compliant without compromising our core principles of privacy and user control.

At the same time, some policies also show up in the form of censorship, blocking, or pressure on Internet services in certain markets. That reality directly informs our technical choices, especially our focus on decentralization and resilience.

So while we’re not a political organization, government policy is something we have to engage with every day, both to operate responsibly and to make sure we’re still delivering on our mission of keeping the Internet open and accessible.