Nym was at Consensus 2023, putting digital privacy first as a web3 principle.
One of the world’s primary crypto conferences, Consensus by Coindesk is about to kick off in Austin, Texas. And in the midst of major regulatory crackdowns, the overarching theme this year is a return to first principles of Web3 and delivering real value to people. This has become a bit of a trend, with every bear market repeating a similar message: now is the time to remember why we are doing this in the first place and BUIDL. But the first principles of web3 are about more than idealism and ethics. They are pragmatic principles, arrived at after years of tireless work and experiences developing the earlier iterations of the internet.
Several founders of Nym found themselves in the Web3 movement after having worked on two generations of decentralized networks: Harry Halpin through his work with W3C and with inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners Lee; Claudia Diaz through her work at KU Leuven on the core privacy problems of the internet with world renowned cryptologist Bart Preneel; Alexis Roussel through the Pirate Party; Dave Hrycyszyn and others in the core team via the under-documented history of federated activist media networks in the late 1990s and 2000s. These decentralised activist networks invented microblogging, tweeting and self-publishing, which was then picked up by and centralised into the familiar corporate form of today: the social media of Web 2.0 platforms who monetized through surveillance.
What are the lessons learned from these experiences? Firstly, if you don’t solve the business model, you will end up back with centralised control and value extraction. Secondly, without a sustainable remuneration model, open source software will simply provide free R&D to the big technology corporations. And third, that the cypherpunks were right: the internet has become a world wide vehicle for mass surveillance and what is needed is strong encryption and mixnets to solve it.
With the advent of Bitcoin, the pieces were finally coming together to solve a fundamental problem of the internet: that the network traffic is entirely exposed. This is because the internet as we know it today was conceived and built in a trusted academic environment. It is notoriously hard to get high-quality, general purpose privacy infrastructure funded and to ensure that this funding doesn’t tempt a company to spy on its users. What had been missing was the final pieces to ensure sustainable, permissionless, decentralised privacy systems: tokenisation to incentivise contributions, reputation and ensure fair remuneration.
It is now time to deliver the privacy layer for the open internet to ensure basic freedoms in a trustless environment. The Nym mixnet is therefore from its very inception built, necessarily and pragmatically, on the first principles of Web3, with the primary mission of enabling digital privacy for all humanity.
The Nym mixnet delivers some of the worlds strongest network layer privacy, shielding IP addresses and traffic patterns for any blockchain, dApp, wallet or application. The mixnet is:
- DECENTRALISED — To enable privacy for everyone.The Nym mixnet is operated by a decentralised community of node operators and stakers. Nym is run by a growing ecosystem of users, developers and researcher partners aligned with the mission to make sure Nym software is running, remains usable and solves real problems.
- PERMISSIONLESS — To ensure the availability of privacy. You do not need anyone’s permission to run Nym software. Anyone can make use of the libraries or spin up a Nym node and contribute to providing privacy by running the Nym mixnet.
- TRUSTLESS — To ensure privacy by default. The Nym mixnet is trustless, meaning that no parts of the system nor its operators have access to information that might compromise the privacy of users. Nym software enacts a strict principle of data minimisation and has no back doors.
- TOKENISED — To prevent operators from selling the customer. Where relevant, Nym software incorporates a token to ensure the economic sustainability of operators so that there is no incentive to ‘sell the customer.
- OPEN SOURCE — To validate the quality and security of the software. All Nym software is open source so that it can be audited by anyone. This is essential for enabling open code contribution and peer-validation, ensuring that it is secure and of the highest quality.
Find Nym at Consensus
April 27th 15:45 Austin Convention Centre, Main stage
- Chelsea Manning and the struggle for Digital Privacy — fireside chat with Chelsea Manning (Nym) and Marc Hochstein, Executive Editor, Consensus CoinDesk
April 27th 12:20 PM — 13:00 Evmos Side event — Main Stage
- Maintaining Privacy in a Cross-Chain Future — Nym head of PR and Comms, Candice Teo will be hosting a panel on privacy
April 28th 14:45 — Austin Convention Centre: Unlock stage
- After Tornado Cash: The Outlook for Privacy and User-Controlled Wallets — with Nym General Counsel, Ahmed Ghappour as panelist