Newsletter - February 2023
The big picture - human rights and the digital euro
Dear friends,?comrades, critics, and fans,
Nym has started off the year addressing the big picture, with a focus on human rights and the Digital Euro.?
We joined ZCash, the Tor Project, Filecoin, Proton and others in the?Fight For the Future campaign?urging incoming US Lawmakers to not undermine people’s right to privacy with clumsy regulation. Nym GC Ahmed Ghappour appeared in?CoinDesk?on the matter. Meanwhile, in Europe, COO Alexis Roussel went to Paris to advocate for the right to?Digital Integrity?at the?Institute for Digital Fundamental Rights. And across the Atlantic, Nym has now proudly joined the Alliance for Encryption in Latin America and the Caribbean –?ACLAC.
In other big picture news, the European Central Bank is conducting market research on the Digital Euro. The Nym R&D team, led by Ania Piotrowska worked with CFO Andrei Serjantov to publish?a quick response on the Digital Euro technical requirements?- they invite feedback and comments! Expect additional in-depth analysis coming up soon.
And?happy Data Privacy Day! On this occasion, we have put focus on metadata, what it is, who has it, and why is the next major issue when it comes to protecting data privacy.
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The Nym core team
Highlights from the past month...
The past month was a busy one for the Nym core team with tech updates, events, community highlights, new joiners, and appearance in the media. Here is a snapshot of what has gone on:
Tech
You can always check the Nym?Platform,?NymConnect?and?Wallet?changelogs for the complete list of fixes and new features in our weekly releases. Here is a summary of what has been accomplished by the dev team over the past month.
Rust SDK?
The initial version of Nym’s Rust SDK has been released. This allows Rust application developers to integrate their Rust applications directly to the Nym mixnet.
Typescript SDK
We have been making improvements to the Nym Typescript SDK, there is now Multi-SURBs (Single Use Reply Blocks) capability added to the package. This will allow Javascript or Typescript developers to benefit from sender anonymity for their applications.?
Centralized allow list
There is now a?centralised allow list?that Network Requesters can download and use. This will allow for better and more reliable service across the network and for NymConnect users. Network Requester operators are still able to add their own URLs to support the services they wish.???
NymConnect
The new version of NymConnect has been released with a slight facelift. The main significant change is that it will have support for multiple SOCKS5 applications at the same time instead of one app at a time. What that means is that the user will be able to use all of the applications in the allowed list via NymConnect.?
Research
In addition to writing an initial analysis of observations regarding the market research on the digital euro (see the “Resources” section below), the research team has been busy with other dev-related analysis:
Resources
European Central Bank digital euro analysis
Recently, the European Central Bank announced a market research exercise on possible technical solutions for a digital euro. The Nym core R&D team gives their first take on the digital euro technical requirements. Read it?here.
Data Privacy Day
Data Privacy Day was on 28 January. As an international effort to create awareness about the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data, and enabling trust, we focused on metadata surveillance this year. The collection of metadata and all that it reveals about us impact all our daily digital lives. Read our blog post on a primer on metadata?here.
For a deeper dive into metadata surveillance, learn from our Chief Scientist Claudia Diaz?here.
Partnerships
Official member of ACLAC
We are now a member of the Alliance for Encryption in Latin America and the Caribbean (ACLAC), joining forces to defend digital rights and privacy in Latin America and the Caribbean. As we continue to grow our active LATAM community, this is a major step in being able to work with other organizations focused on the same vision for LATAM.??
In the media
“Nym is building a decentralized mixnet, providing privacy through anonymity tools. It’s important to note that Nym is not another VPN. VPNs are good for bypassing geolocalization, but bad in terms of privacy because a VPN company stores data about you and your actions. Nym can’t collect this info, and it hides not only your IP but metadata as well.” Read the article?here.
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?
“It’s time for software projects that value privacy to get organized. This is why our organization, Fight for the Future, has released a?letter?signed by 40+ open-source, decentralized and/or privacy-preserving projects that asks lawmakers to protect a pro-privacy future. Signatories on this letter include Tor, The Blockchain Association, Nym, Protocol Labs, Proton, Zcash, Tutanota and Mysterium.” Read article?here.
?
“There are already some blockchains that offer privacy features…But they can't do smart contract execution, so they purposefully have quite a limited feature set. I think that offering privacy features for smart contract execution, which Nym is just about to get on mainnet, is the next obvious step…We think it's going to change the way people think about privacy and blockchains. Looking to the future, there's a huge protocol design space for privacy features to do things like protect transaction gossip, stop MEV extraction, and allow people to control their privacy levels. The perfect privacy blockchain has not yet been built.” Read the article?here.
Community
Data Privacy Day special
A special Nym community call for a special day! To celebrate Data Privacy Day, Nym Chief Scientist Claudia Diaz took the stage to provide a fascinating deep dive into metadata. Because without metadata privacy, there is no privacy - check out our?Data Privacy Day special?to find out why!
Cosmos Club Twitter Space
Our CTO Dave Hrycyszyn joined Cosmos Club for a chat about why Nym was built on Cosmos, what we can do for interchain privacy and the impact of our work on privacy. Listen to it?here.
Test & Earn winners
During the final weeks of 2022, the Nym community helped us stress test the Nym mixnet and NymConnect by completing daily challenges, as part of the NymConnect Test & Earn program. Thanks to everyone who participated, we received some truly amazing submissions from the community. The winners have been selected and contacted. Once we hear back from all of them, the winning posts will be shared. Honourable mention goes to our friend Theo Goodman for his?submission!
First regional Twitter spaces
We have started a series of events and monthly calls in Spanish and Portuguese for all of Latin America. We will continue to do so on a monthly basis throughout 2023.
Spanish:?A joint discussion with the LATAM speaking communities of Manta, Secret Network and Zcash, all fellow Universal Privacy Alliance members, was organised with the objective to educate our followers about digital privacy as a right and not as a feature. With strong participation from the audience, we discussed the importance of our efforts to create a privacy enabled Web3. Listen to the Twitter Space?here (min 4:15).?
Portuguese:?A Portuguese language Twitter space was hosted next with Zcash Brasil and Secret Portuguese. Our goal was to advance the understanding of privacy as the very basis of free and flourishing digital societies. We talked about our different perspectives of digital safety in the new Web3 space and how to improve digital privacy in our day to day lives. Some of the topics discussed were "Why does an ordinary person need digital privacy?" and "what companies do with our metadata''. Listen to the Twitter Space?here (min 5:20).
Nymjas applications to be open soon
Shipyard Academy was a blast! Our community now has distinguished members: Nymsters, Navigators, and Sailmakers, who know everything there is to know about Nym and its history, mission, and technology. Now it’s time to recruit the cream of the crop! We are looking for Nymjas, an elite group of privacy enthusiasts to help us achieve our mission. Nymja applications will open soon, so make sure to keep an eye on our channels!
Join the weekly Nym Community Calls!
We run weekly community calls with news roundups for the week to catch you up on what the team has been up to. Each week, guests from the Nym core team and other projects alike explore key issues and priorities for the Nym ecosystem, privacy, web3, and more.?
Community calls are free to join every Friday on the Nym?Discord server! Listen to previous episodes?here.
Events
Upcoming
UPA Privacy Summit at ETH Denver
We, together with other UPA members, are hosting the first UPA privacy summit during #BUIDL week at ETH Denver. Join us and other industry experts on the most pressing discussions on privacy and building for it.?
Working together with Electric Coin Co. (Zcash), Oasis Protocol, Orchid Network, Aztec Protocol, Manta Network, MobileCoin and Secret Network, we are committed to?drive privacy as default globally.
Monday, 27 February
Register?here.
Some other upcoming key events that we will be participating in:?
For the full list of events and all the details, check out our?website.