[markasoftware]

Nym is pretty complicated and although they offer some kind of traditional VPN service as well IIRC, their main product is actually the only large scale operational "mixnet", which you can think of as kinda similar to Tor but a lot more resistant to certain types of deanonymization attacks (specifically it's designed to be safe against passive global adversaries, ie an attacker who can monitor every packet on the internet, though with the default settings at least it's not quite there yet: https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0055.php).

The research behind the mixnet is quite legit (look up Loopix). There's cryptocurrency involved because they're trying to do this whole complicated thing to incentivize people to operate nodes in the mixnet (though who are we kidding, the real reason is to make money). One can argue this is good for the long term sustainability of the network, and helps prevent sybil attacks by encouraging a large number of legitimate nodes. Of course, the downside is that the company is trying to make money, not just make the best mixnet possible. Having a profit motive also means they're incentivized to get the network to a point where interactive usage works well even at the price of anonymity (an optimization in this vein is sorta the reason that the paper I linked above is possible).

But having a working mixnet at all is extremely cool. People have been researching mixnets for decades without producing anything practical. While Nym is by far the most deployed / most ready mixnet rn, there thankfully are other options coming up, like https://katzenpost.network/ (though I believe most of the devs behind Katzenpost are also in some VC-funded situation, they certainly at least are trying to position katzenpost as more of a community driven project).

[drcongo]

Thanks for the in-depth context, really appreciate it.

[trollbridge]

The best thing about AI is how it’s pulled the rug out from under most of the crypto shilling universe.