8 June 2026
From Chi Proxies to NetNut
Limited-edition sneaker drops are highly anticipated, restricted releases from top brands like Nike, Adidas, and New Balance, often featuring collaborations with prominent athletes, artists, or fashion houses. These exclusive launches leverage intentional scarcity to drive massive cultural demand and secondary market resale value.
The phenomena “Limited-edition sneaker drops” has created a strange technology market around speed, automation, and disguise. When brands such as Nike, Adidas, Supreme, Kith, Foot Locker, and Shopify-based retailers released scarce inventory, buyers competed not only with each other but with automated purchasing software.
These tools, often called “sneaker bots”, were built to automate account creation, queue entry, carting, checkout, and retry logic across multiple retail sites. Some bots specialized in one platform, while others like as AIO (all-in-one) tried to cover several platforms at once, including Shopify, Footsites, Adidas/Yeezy, Supreme, and Nike-related releases.
Public botting guides and directories list software names such as Nike Shoe Bot, Kodai AIO, Wrath AIO, Balkobot, MEKAIO, Prism, Cybersole, and other AIO tools as part of this ecosystem. Sneaker bots are explicitly forbidden by the Terms of Service (TOS) of virtually all online sneaker retailers and marketplaces so operators want to remain hidden.
Sneaker Bots need proxies
Bots alone are not enough. Retailers used IP-rate limits, queues, CAPTCHA, fraud scoring, and anti-bot systems to identify automated behavior. Retailers try to keep their online marketplaces clean from abuse.
Proxy networks became the second half of the trade: they allowed bot operators to distribute thousands of automated requests across different IP addresses so that traffic appeared to come from many ordinary users rather than one machine. In sneaker botting, sneaker proxies were marketed as infrastructure for avoiding IP bans, bypassing rate limits, choosing geographic locations, and keeping checkout sessions stable during high-demand releases. A decade ago, this activity sounded inoffensive but it was an early sign of the future to come: unaccountable scraping.
One of the proxy brands that emerged from this culture was Chi Proxies, operating under the handle @ChiCooked. “Chi” as in “Chicago”, and “Cooked” as the term used when goods are bought through automation.
Chi Proxies run a Discord channel and a public X/Twitter profile (@ChiCooked) created in March 2017. The account advertised proxy plans and directed customers to a Discord server and built a sneaker-proxy community where Discord groups, cook groups, bot support channels, and drop-day infrastructure were part of the commercial model.
Behind the brand was the Illinois registered company “Chi Cooked LLC”. In an unexpected twist in late 2020, the company appeared in U.S. securities filings (SEC) because it was acquired by Safe-T USA Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of the Israeli public company then known as Safe-T Group Ltd. Yes, the company that would later be rebranded as Alarum Technologies Ltd, owner of Netnut proxies.
The SEC documents reveals Mr. Kyle Exline as the seller of Chi Cooked LLC.
Sneakers for the win
After Qurium received a massive scraping event the 14th of May 2026, we decided to look closely into Chi Cooked LLC and their connection with NetNut. Historical data of the proxies run by Chiproxies suggests that the acquisition did not create the relationship from zero; it formalized an existing commercial dependency.
Chi Cooked’s customer base was already buying sneaker-proxy access that depended on upstream proxy capacity from NetNut. NetNut itself had entered Safe-T’s structure in 2019, when Safe-T acquired NetNut’s share capital and related operating assets from the DiViNetworks side.
What does this means in practice? That the December 2020 purchase of Chi Cooked brought the front-end sneaker customer base, Discord/community channel, and retail-facing proxy brand already operating in NetNut proxy network?
When Safe-T announced that it had acquired Chi Cooked LLC for $1.1 million in cash (with possible additional earn-out consideration), Safe-T described Chi Cooked as a provider of IP proxy services with thousands of monthly paying customers.
But that exactly did Safe-T buy from Chi Cooked LLC?
The integration of Chi Cooked with NetNut’s residential and datacenter proxy network meant, in practical terms, that Safe-T was not just buying software or servers; it was acquiring a working community-facing sneaker-proxy business whose customers were already using their own proxy access.
This strategy became explicit two months later. In February 2021, Safe-T launched what it called a “breakthrough residential proxies network” for the multibillion-dollar sneaker resale market. The company described the product as the first synergy from the recent acquisition, combining Safe-T’s business IP proxy platform with consumer IP proxy capabilities. This was the moment when infrastructure associated with sneaker botting was repackaged as an official product line inside the Safe-T / NetNut structure.
Who owned Chi Proxies?
The SEC-filed acquisition agreement lists Mr Kyle Exline as the owner of Chi Proxies. Documents from the company registration in Chicago included a business address connected to the Exline family until 2020.
When the house was put on sale, online pictures of the property helped us to confirm that Chi Proxies operated from the family residence.
The same acquisition agreement shows that Exline was not simply a passive seller at closing, but the seller and the buyer would enter into an employment or Seller Services Agreement providing for the terms of his employment. The agreement does not disclose the detailed job title, salary, duration, or duties. By January 9, 2023, the entity formerly known as Chi Cooked LLC was merged into NetNut Inc..
Public records also gave us additional context for the period around the company sale. Public records show that the Chicago unit associated with Chi Cooked’s listed address was sold in October 2020 and less than two months later, on December 8, 2020, Kyle Exline sold Chi Cooked LLC to Safe-T USA Inc. for an initial cash consideration of $1.1 million.
Just before the company was sold, Kyle and his wife Maria (former Naskalov) Exline purchased another Chicago property on West Erie Street (June 2020). In January 2021 that property was transferred into two different living trusts bearing their names and later sold in August 2022. Property public records also show a property purchase in Clive, Iowa (December 2022).
To our surprise, Kyle does not match the typical profile of someone trading sneaker proxies, or maybe he does? Exline holds a degree in healthcare administration from Indiana University and since 2008 has been working in the senior-living industry. Kyle Exline is now in Iowa as an executive in Life Care Services, an LCS company based in Des Moines.
Netnut – the sneaker proxy hub
Once it became clear to us that Divinetworks/Netnut was providing proxies to different sneaker proxies resellers, we decided to look into likely candidates. We noticed that once the domains were registered, the sneaker proxy resellers were pointing their DNS to netnut.io or ntnt.io.
By pointing the DNS to netnut.io proxies advertised by dozens of proxy resellers using their own domains were resolved by a central DNS control infrastructure operated by NetNut. Naming conventions were also a common denominator as well as the use of snkrs-us-s{xx} in the subdomains. For example we found:
snkrs-us-s18[.]blankbot.co.uk.
snkrs-us-s18[.]boltproxy.io.
snkrs-us-s18[.]hypeally.io.
snkrs-us-s18[.]jeru035.com.
snkrs-us-s18[.]juicedproxies.com.
snkrs-us-s18[.]proxies.instaproxyllc.com.
snkrs-us-s18[.]proxy.chiefproxies.com.
snkrs-us-s18[.]proxypla.net.
snkrs-us-s18[.]splashproxies.com.
snkrs-us-s18[.]zoomresi.com.
We identified no less than 30 resellers of proxy services, many of them with a clear focus on the sneaker space. Interestingly enough, “Chi Proxies” was one of the earliest adopters.
blackhatproxies[.]app
boltproxy[.]io
chicooked[.]io
chiefproxies[.]com
cometproxies[.]com
cometproxies[.]io
fatalproxies[.]com
gb[.]cookieproxies.com
general[.]prxy.ninja
hydraproxies[.]xyz
hypeally[.]xyz
juicedproxies[.]com
laces[.]ai
lime-geo[.]com
litesupply[.]io
proxy[.]308proxies.com
proxy[.]chiefproxies.com
proxyheaven-proxies[.]com
proxy[.]jeru035.com
proxypla[.]net
proxy[.]rainproxy.io
proxy[.]undefynd.com
reddirtproxies[.]io
release[.]prxy.ninja
resi[.]chironproxies.com
residential[.]vip
safernetwork[.]io
shproxyclients[.]xyz
sneakedproxies[.]co
splashproxies[.]com
sub[.]coppedproxies.com
thunderproxies[.]net
vexologyproxies[.]xyz
zoomresi[.]com
Alarum and RoboVPN
While looking into Safe-T / Alarum’s business structure, we found that RoboVPN (Cyprus) was listed alongside the group’s related subsidiaries and consumer internet-access companies, including CyberKick, Spell Me (Seychelles) and iShield. Although RoboVPN is marketed as a free or consumer VPN product, its own terms describes a peer-network model in which users could share device resources, mainly their IP address, with the company’s network.
Conclusion
The Chi Proxies case shows how a niche sneaker-proxy business could be absorbed into a stock listed (ALAR) proxy-network company and rebranded as legitimate commercial infrastructure. Chi Proxies did not appear as an independent network operator in isolation; the evidence indicates that it functioned as a customer-facing reseller or client channel for proxy capacity connected to NetNut. Its real value was not simply technical infrastructure, but the community it had built: a paying sneaker-bot customer base, a Discord-driven support and sales channel, and a brand trusted inside the drop and resale economy.
When Safe-T acquired Chi Cooked LLC in December 2020, the transaction effectively formalized that relationship. Safe-T/NetNut did not only buy a small proxy brand; it bought access to the sneaker-reseller customer base that was already using proxy capacity from the Israeli group’s network. The $1.1 million cash payment therefore appears to have monetized the front-end business customers, brand, community, and recurring demand while bringing that activity officially inside Safe-T’s corporate structure.
This is the broader significance of the acquisition. A market that had developed around sneaker bots, Discord groups, and limited-edition retail drops was repackaged as a normal privacy and residential-proxy product line. Through the Chi Cooked acquisition, Safe-T (Alarum Technologies) was able to convert a grey-market sneaker-proxy channel into a formal business segment tied to NetNut and infrastructure associated with DiViNetworks. In practical terms, the deal helped wash the sneaker-proxy economy into the language of enterprise proxy services, privacy solutions, and commercial web-data infrastructure.
References and evidence notes
- SEC Exhibit 4.4 – Equity Purchase Agreement dated December 8, 2020, among Safe-T USA Inc., Chi Cooked LLC, and Mr. Kyle Exline. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1725332/000121390021016788/f20f2020ex4-4_safetgroup.htm
- Safe-T / Alarum February 2021 announcement launching residential proxies for the sneaker resale market. https://alarum.io/safe-t-group-launches-breakthrough-residential-proxies-network-to-support-the-multibillion-dollar-sneaker-resale-market/
- Safe-T NetNut acquisition announcement, April 2019. https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/safe-t-to-acquire-netnut-ltd-a-business-proxy-network-solution-provider-300829679.html
- Life Care Services / LCS announcement of Kyle Exline promotion, November 2023. https://www.lcsliving.com/resources/for-providers/news-and-insights/kyle-exline-promoted-to-life-care-services-svp-director-of-operations-management/
- Chi Proxies / @ChiCooked public X/Twitter profile. https://x.com/ChiCooked