Blockchain-powered privacy start-up Nym raises USD 13 million

Neuchâtel based privacy start-up Nym Technologies has successfully closed a USD 13 million investment round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Built by leading researchers and experienced developers, Nym Technologies is an open-source and decentralized infrastructure that offers full-stack privacy. The platform is permission-less and incentivized, empowering developers to build applications that guarantee security against metadata surveillance at the mixnet and credentials levels.

Nym’s revolutionary “mixnet” is the only technology that can defeat nation-state level mass surveillance where the adversary can observe every internet packet in a network at scale, unlike VPNs or even Tor. The start-up based in Neuchâtel accomplishes this seemingly impossible feat by mixing packets in a series of decentralized nodes and adding dummy traffic as needed.

Nym’s latest Series A financing round in the amount of USD 13 million was led by Silicon Valley based Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Crypto). Other investors include Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, HashKey, Fenbushi Capital, and more than two dozen operators of validator nodes, or servers responsible for verifying transactions on the start-up’s network.

The most advanced group of mixnet researchers and engineers ever assembled

“Nym’s network-level technology is essential for any blockchain that strives to offer privacy for its users, and its clever incentive structures set it apart from other solutions,” said Ali Yahya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Nym’s team may be the most advanced group of mixnet researchers and engineers ever assembled. As demand for online privacy continues to grow, their role in the space will become ever-more important.”

“We at Nym are very lucky, as it’s historically unprecedented to see support from the best venture capitalists to stop mass surveillance. To make privacy real on the scale of the entire internet, building a real-world working mixnet has long been the missing piece of a puzzle that predates even the origin of Bitcoin,” said Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies

With a fresh capital injection just before the platform’s decentralized mixnet mainnet launch, Nym Technologies plans to use the funds to expand its community and add a dedicated product team.