by Lydia Ludmila 
- The initial grants are unrestricted presents except for Nymbox
- Supported projects include Tails, which Snowden used to leak confidential information
- Gifts from Nym will allow deeper research on the relationship between metadata and privacy
Nym Technologies SA announced a $300 million funding round to enhance internet privacy.
Contributors to the new NYM Innovation Fund include Huobi Incubator (HT/USD), Tioga Capital, Polychain, Greenfield One, Eden Block, NGC Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, OKX Blockdream Ventures, Haskey Capital, Figment, Tayssir Capital, a16zcrypto, KR1, and Lemniscap.
First 4 projects to receive support
The initial grants are unrestricted presents except for Nymbox, which is a directed development project. Four projects will be supported in the beginning.
Carmela Troncoso
Troncoso co-invented the privacy-enhanced COVID contract tracing DP3T framework. She is an outspoken critic of COVID passports and a leading expert in privacy engineering and mixnets.
Daniel J. Bernstein
Bernstein co-invented a number of high-speed contemporary crypto primitives. He made headlines in the Bernstein vs. US court case, arguing against the US government on whether “code is free speech.”
Tails
Tails is the software Edward Snowden used to leak confidential information from the NSA. It features very high levels of privacy and security and incorporates Tor and the Electrum wallet. This is not the only connection. Nym launched its native token in Paris with Edward Snowden on April 14.
The fourth project, Nymbox, is a community-driven OpenWRT package of the Nym gateway software.
Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies, stated:
While this fund may seem large, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the endless amounts of cash possessed by vested interests at Silicon Valley companies and nation-states that benefit from mass surveillance. However, we’re going to fight the good fight and the odds may not be as impossible as they seem. We have new partners that are waiting in the wings to join the fund that we can’t even announce in this initial fund. I’m just thrilled that developers now can finally get paid for building privacy-enhancing technologies.
Lior Messika, Founder and Managing Partner at Eden Block, commented:
I’ve been having some really interesting conversations with a bunch of scientists and builders about what could potentially be built on top of Nym. Knowing the ins and outs of the technology and the infrastructure Nym is creating has always kept me super interested in the possible applications powered by NYM. Basically, timing could not have been better.
Carmela Troncoso said:
The gift from Nym’s fund will allow the SPRING lab to deepen our research on the relationship of metadata and privacy. It will allow us to design and test new defense mechanisms to improve privacy in the web and in communications, making it easier to build privacy-preserving applications.
