2024 was a significant year for StormyCloud. We faced our biggest technical challenge yet, expanded our infrastructure, launched new services, and laid the groundwork for an even stronger 2025. Here's a look back at what we accomplished.
Defending Against a Massive DDoS Attack
Early 2024 brought a network-wide DDoS attack targeting I2P outproxies across the ecosystem. StormyCloud's infrastructure absorbed over 100 million malicious requests during this period. It was the largest coordinated attack we've faced, and it tested everything we'd built.
We reinforced our I2P Outproxy infrastructure to handle the sustained load, implemented additional traffic filtering, and kept our services running throughout. The attack ultimately made our infrastructure more resilient — we came out stronger on the other side.
Infrastructure Expansion
We relocated our primary infrastructure from Austin to Houston, giving us access to expanded capacity and improved network connectivity. This move positions us well for the growth we're planning in 2025 and beyond.
New Services and Capabilities
2024 saw us add meaningful new capabilities:
- XMR Node: Integrated Tor and I2P support for our Monero cryptocurrency node, giving privacy-focused users additional ways to interact with the network.
- DNS Upgrades: Implemented DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS capabilities on our public DNS service, protecting users' query privacy from ISP surveillance.
- Service Statistics: Published usage statistics so the community can see how our services are being used. Transparency matters to us.
- Website Redesign: Launched an improved website with better performance and clearer information about our services.
Goals for 2025
We've set ambitious priorities for the year ahead:
- Donor engagement: Building sustainable funding to ensure long-term organizational health. We're self-funded and community-supported — your donations keep the lights on.
- Monitoring infrastructure: Developing comprehensive monitoring so we can detect and respond to issues faster.
- High availability: Implementing shared storage for service redundancy, eliminating single points of failure.
- System administration: Hiring a part-time system administrator to help manage our growing infrastructure.
- I2P Web Hosting: Launching beta I2P web hosting so anyone can run their site inside the I2P network.
- CheckI2P.com: Expanding features on our I2P network health monitoring tool.
- Community support: Continuing to show up for the I2P community through infrastructure, funding, and advocacy.
We're proud of what the team accomplished in 2024. The challenges we faced made us better, and the groundwork we laid sets us up for a strong year ahead.
Happy New Year — and thank you to everyone who supports what we do. We couldn't do it without you.