[drtgh]

Authoritarian governments block most of the internet, and as part of this they block VPNs also. Therefore people had to develop client/server protocols to mimic normal browsing packets in order to access the VPNs.

But, those governments constantly adapt their internet sniffing to detect such traffic and block it, so people's day-to-day internet browsing routine is "Which new protocol is working this month?"

[DanAtC]

How does one keep up-to-date on all the different protocols? How can you trust one over another?

[drtgh]

I don't need it at the moment (European), so I'm not updated. But awaiting someone else's answer, it is not difficult to get to grips with the matter, I suggest start with a "XRay vs Trojan" search, they are proxy servers (Trojan is GFW or GO) and visit all the links about the matter (any language, Chinese included, under several search engines), paying attention to the user's comments about the used protocols ( VMess, VLESS, XTLS, REALITY, VISION, and so on), different tools, clients, and searching again about them within a deep loop search.

> How can you trust one over another?

Even though those protocols and tools are open source, I would take it easy, read the code, search for analyses about it, trying make sure that nothing is happening in the background (my sincere apologies to the authors), and after this compile it my self. I would use a dedicated machine for it, not my main computer, and monitor the traffic. I mean, I would not install/use them without minimal checking first.