Nym Technologies, a Swiss privacy-focused startup, has announced that it has secured $300 million in commitments from venture capital partners in support of the NYM Innovation Fund. Nym intends to grant grants to developers and incentivize them to build on top of its decentralized infrastructure. This funding comes a couple of weeks after its native NYM token debuted on several of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the market, including OKX and Huobi.
At press time, the NYM token was trading at an average price of $0.92, with its 24-hour trading volume seeing a spike since the fund announcement. On the day NYM went public, April 14, the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden addressed attendees of the token’s launch event in Paris, where he attributed current internet privacy issues to outdated decisions by 1970s computer networking.
Nym hosts mixnets, or a system of network protocols that hide the metadata footprints of individuals and protect applications, as well as their coins and wallets, from mass surveillance. Applications built on top of Nym work to enhance third-party privacy services offered on virtual private networks (VPNs) and on Tor.
Investors in the Nym Innovation Fund include Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, Greenfield One, Huobi Incubator, Tioga Capital, Eden Block, NGC Ventures, HashKey Capital, Figment, Fenbushi Capital, Tayssir Capital, KR1, Lemniscap, and new backers OKX Blockdream Ventures. .
The company tweeted that venture capital investors “from our previous rounds are redoubling their support” for Nym at a time when “everyone is terrified of VC dumping into projects.”
Early Nym Innovation Fund grant winners include Tails software, used by Snowden to leak NSA secrets, as well as university researcher Carmela Troncoso’s privacy-enhanced COVID contract tracking system. and Daniel J. Bernstein, tasked with accelerating Nym’s crypto packet format, called Sphinx, which powers both the Lightning Network and Nym.
The first round of grants is aimed at “improving Internet privacy for the greater good,” according to the company. The Nym Foundation has also been created, which plans to publish an open call for more applicants and proposals.
The only way to protect privacy in the Metaverse is by taking a fully decentralized approach, argues @colinpape https://t.co/fzNP9LP4ym
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) February 20, 2022
Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies, stated that the Innovation Fund represents “a drop in the ocean compared to the endless amounts of cash held by vested interests in Silicon Valley companies and the nation-states that benefit from mass surveillance. He also exclusively stated to Cointelegraph that the funds will go to the best academics in the world:
“Cryptocurrency originally had a vision of defending the privacy of ordinary people, but US government funding has historically ignored privacy in favor of mass NSA surveillance. Until recently, venture capital firms have financed privacy-invading advertising business models by companies like Facebook,” Halpin said.
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