Mixnets: what are they good for?
Real-world use cases show how people are using the Nym mixnet to privacy-enhance their lives.
The Nym mixnet is an extremely powerful, highly novel technology that’s unparalleled in scope for privacy. Not only does the mixnet encrypt message content, unlike any other technology available today it also protects patterns of messages from analysis or surveillance.
Soon, Nym will release a VPN that makes accessing the mixnet as simple as a single click. But the mixnet is already shielding users from surveillance, whether by guarding validator privacy on blockchains, or helping people gain real financial privacy by obscuring crypto wallet traffic.
Read ahead for more on how the mixnet protects communication patterns — the VPN, private crypto wallets, and shielded validators — how these protections are helping people, and why they matter.
Nym use case #1: Nym VPN: the world’s most powerful VPN — coming soon
Approximately 1.6 billion people use a VPN today, and by 2027 the value of the VPN market is estimated to soar to US$107.5 billion globally. With a fifth of the world’s population actively using a VPN, there’s not just a thirst for protecting online privacy, there’s a clear need for it. As governments work in lockstep to meddle with the freedom of communication or to access information without censorship, the VPN market is only going to grow even further.
The upcoming Nym VPN will combine the features, ease of use and speed of VPNs with the unparalleled privacy and trust offered by the Nym mixnet. It will solve three major vulnerabilities with most existing VPNs by offering
*Pattern privacy:
Every online interaction leaks data about data, called ‘metadata’, which is used to infer information from patterns and de-anonymise people. The Nym mixnet splits data into smaller, identically sized, encrypted packets, which is then mixed in with dummy traffic and dispersed through Nym nodes around the world at randomised intervals. Finally it is decrypted and reassembled, preventing the observation of metadata and providing pattern privacy.
*Privacy when paying
If you use a traditional bank card to buy a VPN you’re doxxing yourself. Nym VPN subscriptions will be available with completely anonymous credentials and payment methods for total, holistic privacy.
*A decentralised, trustless model
Centralised VPNs are extra vulnerable to data breaches. Having a single point of failure also opens VPNs to vulnerabilities as with the zero-day vulnerability found with Atlas VPN that leaked users’ IP addresses. There is no centralisation in the Nym mixnet whatsoever, unlike even Tor, the previous gold standard for online privacy. Unlike Tor, the Nym mixnet directory authority is decentralised and it is the Nym token economics that governs reputation and rewards on the mixnet.
Today, individuals and organisations are already communicating securely through Telegram and Element via the Nym mixnet by using NymConnect.
See also: What does it take to build the world’s most powerful VPN?
With Nym VPN, users will be able to access the mixnet with all the simplicity of a VPN — curtailing censorship and giving people unfettered access to whatever services they wish to use, free from interference and overreach.
Nym use case #2: financial privacy with crypto wallets on the Nym mixnet
Gain real financial privacy and safeguard your crypto finances from attackers and surveillance and join the users already protecting their wallets with NymConnect. Developers and project owners: check the developer portal to learn more about integrating your wallet with NymConnect.
All Web3 wallets, or ‘light nodes’, communicate with validators, or ‘full nodes’, when they sign transactions and retrieve data. This means the transaction information of hundreds of thousands of people hurtles across open networks every minute of every day. And the patterns of this traffic are entirely exposed, putting people’s identities, digital assets, social graphs and more at risk.
Furthermore, every single crypto transaction is recorded on the blockchain forever. This is by design to keep blockchains ‘immutable’ i.e. permanent and tamper-proof. But because blockchains are public ledgers, these transactions are also visible to the whole internet forever — exposing transactions (peer-to-peer broadcasts) to anyone who cares to look.
Without a privacy-minded approach to crypto, users are at risk of being deanonymised through their transactions and targeted for attacks or hacking. Wallets are a high-value target for hackers — and recently Atomic Wallet users were robbed for an estimated $35m.
The NymConnect app is already integrated with Monero, Blockstream Green, Electrum and now, Alephium to obfuscate traffic to and from wallets over the mixnet via the SOCKS5 proxy.
See also: How can I use Monero over the Nym mixnet?
Privacy-enhanced wallets obscure users from would-be snoopers, whose surveillance may be the first step in scoping accounts to target for theft. Whether on hot or cold wallets, crypto phishing schemes are becoming much more sophisticated — and the best way to start protecting yourself is to avoid being a target in the first place.
Any wallet that can run with SOCKS5 can be integrated into NymConnect.
Nym use case #3 Layer-0 infrastructure privacy
Many of the most popular crypto projects, such as Ethereum, Polkadot, and Cosmos, use a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to determine who will create the next block on the blockchain.
These rely on validators to coordinate with one another, leaving all of these traffic patterns open to analysis.
The end result is compromised privacy, which leaves validators at risk of DDoS attacks to force them offline, or subject to doxxing and targeted censorship. Even privacy-minded projects fail to address the fundamental problems of the network layer.
To answer these problems and build pattern privacy, Nym partnered with Chainsafe for a LibP2P module that cloaks validators on the Ethereum chain and Aztec to further protect transactions on Ethereum.
A proof of concept on the Cosmos Broadcaster that runs via the Nym mixnet has been completed and will soon be merged on GitHub. Keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post for more details.
Connect with Nym and build the future private internet
Nym can and will be the privacy layer for the whole internet, whether Web 2.0 or Web3, Layer-1 or Layer-2, nestled at the very bottom of the stack and cloaking all that sits above it.
Any and all apps, wallets, blockchains, dApps, or other internet traffic can be privacy-enhanced by running it through the Nym mixnet. This is because the mixnet is ‘Layer 0’ infrastructure, the network layer that sits below absolutely everything else, even protocols.
As Edward Snowden said at the launch of the Nym mainnet, privacy for Bitcoin “is an open disaster.” Like everything online, a fundamental problem is the transparency and lack of privacy around the network infrastructure layer, i.e. Layer 0 — precisely the layer that the Nym mixnet addresses.
Achieving infrastructure privacy online is key to toppling the surveillance economics of the internet and replacing it with a decentralised model that values people’s dignity and rewards privacy-minded humans for building a better internet.
See more: Nym: Layer 0 privacy infrastructure for the whole internet
Builders: get in touch now to integrate the Nym mixnet with your project, and tap into powerful, unparalleled privacy protection. Follow Nym on social media, subscribe to the newsletter, and join the community.
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