How Activists Use Starlink: Ensuring Wallet Availability During Network Blackouts

Immediate context: why wallet availability during blackouts is now a core threat

Network blackouts are not theoretical. Since 2022 they have become a recurring tactic in authoritarian and conflict zones; by late 2025 activists and aid groups reported tens of thousands of satellite terminals in use to circumvent shutdowns. For developers and admins responsible for NFT wallets, marketplaces, and custody services, a national or regional internet cutoff is a direct attack on availability, transaction finality, and user trust.

This tactical guide is written for technology professionals charged with keeping wallets operable under blackout conditions. It focuses on practical, implementable strategies using Starlink and alternative satellite links, resilient wallet architectures, offline signing workflows, and operational security — all in the context of 2026 threat and technology trends.

Executive takeaways (most important first)

• Provision satellite connectivity (Starlink and alternatives) as part of your resilience plan and test it under realistic conditions.
• Design wallet systems to separate connectivity from signing: enable read-only sync via satellite, queue transactions for offline signing, and use QR/PSBT flows to broadcast when connectivity is available.
• Use decentralized distribution for critical assets: IPFS/ENS mirrors, libp2p peers, or onion services reachable over Starlink and other satellite links.
• Operational security matters: device hygiene, account metadata, and physical safety must be part of deployment playbooks for activists and staff.
• Run tabletop drills and automated failovers; maintain compact, low-power kits for rapid deployment.

2026 landscape: what changed and why it matters

Late 2025 and early 2026 saw widespread reporting of satellite internet being used to mitigate state-level shutdowns. Media coverage described activists using Starlink terminals to maintain communications and access online services during blackouts.

Key trends affecting wallet availability:

• Increased LEO satellite capacity: Starlink’s network and other LEO constellations (OneWeb operational expands coverage; Amazon Kuiper deployments progressed in 2025–26) provide more global availability and redundancy.
• Commercialization of satellite services: Specialized offerings for maritime, aviation, and enterprise allow higher throughput and SLAs, relevant for custodial services and high-availability nodes.
• Operational security concerns: Governments have increased legal pressure and physical interdiction; activists need covert deployment workflows.
• Wallet architecture evolution: Adoption of PSBT workflows, multisig threshold signing libraries (FROST, GG18), and air-gapped mobile signing have matured, enabling robust offline-first designs.

Threat model: clarify what you must protect

Before designing systems, define a clear threat model. Typical high-impact scenarios during a blackout include:

• Complete cellular and ISP cutoff within a region (national shutdown).
• Targeted blocking of cloud providers, DNS or specific IP ranges used by wallet services.
• Physical seizure of infrastructure (servers, terminals) or forced disclosure of account credentials.
• Metadata surveillance: correlating satellite user accounts with transaction activity.

From that model, classify assets: hot keys, signer devices, transaction relays, indexers, and user onboarding flows. Each requires specific resilience and OPSEC controls.

Tactical architecture: keeping users connected and able to transact

1) Connectivity layer: Starlink and fallbacks

Starlink should be treated as the primary rapid-deployment option because of its global footprint and consumer-grade kit. But operational plans must include fallbacks.

• Starlink deployment modes: consumer terminals (Portable/Standard), Starlink RV/Maritime for more robust antennas, and Starlink Business for higher throughput and static IP where available.
• Alternatives: OneWeb (broad northern hemisphere coverage), Inmarsat/Iridium Certus (lower bandwidth but resilient), VSAT providers, and emergent LEO players (Kuiper) — include at least two vendor paths.
• Multipath routing: Use BGP/MPLS or SD-WAN appliances to failover between terrestrial and satellite links automatically; prioritize lower-latency terrestrial if available.

Operational tips for satellite kits

• Use low-profile enclosures or rooftop concealment for terminals in hostile environments.
• Power: include UPS and portable battery systems sized for at least 8–24 hours of operation. Solar + battery is ideal for prolonged blackouts.
• Pre-provision accounts and avoid tying Starlink subscription names to individual activists. Use organizational accounts with distributed admin recovery.
• Test registration and activation steps in the lab — many activations require online account validation that may be blocked by geofencing.

2) Data and service distribution: make critical services reachable over satellite

Design your infrastructure so that the minimum necessary services remain reachable over unreliable satellite links.

• Read-only mirrors: Host static app assets (PWAs), token metadata, and read APIs on CDNs and IPFS/ENS mirrors. These can be served to users over Starlink with low overhead.
• Indexers and light nodes: Run lightweight indexers close to the satellite link. For Ethereum-like chains, use archive-lite nodes or shared validators primitives to serve balance lookups and nonce info.
• Transaction relays: Provide small relay endpoints with simple REST or PSBT endpoints that accept signed transactions or PSBTs for broadcast. Keep minimal op surface and rate-limit aggressively.
• Decentralized transport: Use libp2p, cjdns, or secure mesh layers for peer-to-peer distribution of critical data among local activists when Starlink is intermittent.

3) Signing and custody: separate signing from connectivity

Never assume continuous network access for key operations. Shift to patterns that allow signing to happen offline and safely.

• Air-gapped signing: Encourage workflows where transaction construction and broadcasting are decoupled. Users or custodians generate unsigned transactions on an online device, move them to an air-gapped signer (QR, SD card, USB), sign, and move the signed blob back to a relay for broadcast.
• PSBT and QR: Use PSBT (Bitcoin) or analogous partially-signed formats for EVM transactions. Encode PSBTs into QR codes or short URI chunks to ferry through low-bandwidth channels.
• Threshold signatures & multisig: Implement FROST/GG18 threshold schemes or multisig contracts so no single device compromise yields full theft. Distribute shares across geographically separated signers and different connectivity paths.
• Hardware wallets & HSMs: Use certified hardware wallets for end users and HSMs or dedicated signers for custodial services. Ensure signer firmware can operate offline and be updated securely.

Concrete workflows: examples you can implement today

Example A — Activist mobile wallet (offline-first)

1. Preload app via PWA over IPFS/CDN; app assets are cached by Service Worker.
2. Lightweight indexer on Starlink provides balance/nonce via an authenticated read API.
3. User constructs transaction locally; app produces a PSBT or EIP-712 payload and displays a QR code.
4. Air-gapped signing device (cold mobile with hardware wallet) scans QR, signs, and returns signed payload via a QR/USB to the online gateway using Starlink for broadcast.
5. Relay returns a signed tx receipt; app updates local state via eventual consistency with the indexer sync.

Example B — Custodial service with satellite fallback

1. Cluster deployed across continent with SD-WAN and automatic route failover to Starlink Business links.
2. Transactions queued in a durable message bus (Kafka/RabbitMQ) on local nodes; signing delegates to threshold signer cluster split across regions.
3. During blackout, edge relays advertise a reduced API surface; non-essential services (analytics, auctions) are paused to preserve bandwidth.
4. Operators use secure shells over VPN + Tor over Starlink for administrative access; emergency rotation of keys uses pre-installed cold backup signers.

Sample pseudocode: creating and QR-encoding a PSBT (illustrative)

<code>// Pseudocode (JS-like) creating PSBT and QR chunks
const psbt = wallet.createPsbt({to, value, gas});
const base64 = encodeBase64(psbt.serialize());
const chunks = chunkString(base64, 800); // QR payload limit
chunks.forEach((c, i) => qr.generate({data: c, index: i, total: chunks.length}));
</code>

Privacy and OPSEC: protect identities and metadata

Satellite links can leak identifying metadata. Package your operational plan to reduce correlation risks.

• Account separation: Avoid linking Starlink subscriptions or vendor accounts to named individuals. Use organization-owned accounts with role-based access and emergency recovery with distributed trustees.
• Traffic obfuscation: Route sensitive admin access through VPN + Tor over satellite. Use DoH/DoT with trusted resolvers to reduce DNS leakage.
• Burner devices: For field activists, use disposable phones, ephemeral identities, and single-purpose wallets with limited balances to reduce catastrophic loss risk.
• Log hygiene: For hosted relays, minimize logs retention; use ephemeral keys and forward secrecy where possible. Design for forensic nondisclosure when lawful demands threaten safety.

Testing, drills and operational readiness

Availability under blackout is not achieved by reading docs — it requires rigorous rehearsal.

• Schedule quarterly blackout drills simulating region-wide ISP outages. Include satellite activation, account workflows, and air-gapped signing in the exercise.
• Measure end-to-end latency and throughput over each satellite vendor and maintain a performance database for routing decisions.
• Validate disaster recovery by performing failovers: restore indexers from cold storage, reconstitute multisig from shares, and confirm transaction flows under constrained bandwidth.

Legal, compliance and ethical considerations

Work closely with legal counsel when provisioning satellite services in hostile jurisdictions. Key concerns:

• Some governments may declare satellite terminals illegal or attempt to seize them; ensure safe storage and plausible deniability protocols.
• Export controls, sanctions, and provider policies (Starlink terms of service) may restrict operations; monitor policy updates and maintain alternative vendors.
• Document your compliance posture and provide transparent audit logs for regulators in permissive jurisdictions, while balancing safety for vulnerable users.

Case study (brief): Iran, 2023–2026

"Activists spent years preparing for a communications blackout, smuggling in satellite systems and making digital shutdowns harder for authorities to enforce." — reporting aggregated in early 2026

Between 2023 and 2026, open reporting documented tens of thousands of terminals used by activists and NGOs to maintain access. The operational lessons are instructive:

• Prepositioned kits and local training tripled activation speed versus ad-hoc deployments.
• Simple P2P sharing of signed transaction blobs among trusted caches reduced time-to-broadcast when satellite windows were seized or congested.
• Combining low-bandwidth alternatives (SMS relays, LoRa peer-to-peer) with satellite connectivity increased robustness for time-critical operations.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Assuming starlink==anonymous: Starlink accounts can be correlated to physical locations and payment methods; use careful account management and OPSEC.
• Overloading satellite link: Don’t replicate full node data over Starlink. Use lightweight indexers and cache aggressively to keep bandwidth reasonable.
• Single signer failure: Avoid single points of failure for signing by adopting threshold schemes and geographic dispersal of shares.
• Not testing offline flows: Building offline signing but never exercising it will leave you exposed in a real blackout; test regularly.

Implementation checklist for teams (ready-to-use)

1. Perform threat modeling and classify wallet assets.
2. Procure at least two satellite connectivity options (Starlink + alternate vendor).
3. Build a minimal offline signing flow (PSBT or EIP-712) and test end-to-end with QR/USB transfer.
4. Deploy read-only mirrors for static app assets (CDN + IPFS) and lightweight indexers near satellite gateways.
5. Implement threshold signing or multisig and validate recovery procedures quarterly.
6. Create covert deployment playbooks: concealment, power management, and extraction steps for field kits.
7. Run blackout drills and update runbooks based on lessons learned.

Future predictions (2026 and beyond)

Expect continued evolution in both satellite infrastructure and wallet resilience patterns:

• More LEO entrants: Increased capacity from multiple operators will improve redundancy and lower costs.
• Specialized resilience products: Satellite+edge appliances purpose-built for blockchain services (static IP, signed relays, offline-friendly APIs) will appear in enterprise catalogs.
• Regulatory pressure: Governments will attempt stronger controls on satellite deployments; legal strategies and vendor diversification will become standard risk controls.
• Offline UX improvements: Wallets will integrate native QR chunking, PSBT improvements, and better air-gap user journeys to reduce friction under duress.

Conclusion — prioritize resilience now

Network blackouts are a systemic risk to any service that depends on continuous internet connectivity. For NFT wallets and custody platforms, the stakes are high: user funds, reputation, and safety. Building resilience is both a technical and operational challenge.

Start by treating satellite connectivity like any other critical resource: procure redundancies, design offline-first signing, protect metadata, and rehearse. The best defenses are simple, tested, and repeatable.

Actionable next steps

• Run a blackout table-top within 30 days to identify single points of failure.
• Implement one offline signing path and validate it end-to-end with a live satellite link.
• Build a compact field kit (terminal, battery, router, air-gapped signer) and train at least two staff on deployment and OPSEC.

Need help operationalizing this? nftwallet.cloud offers resilience audits, satellite integration consulting, and secure offline signing toolkits for wallets and marketplaces. Contact us for a readiness review and turnkey playbooks tailored to your product.

Stay safe, design for the worst, and test constantly.

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