Nym Technologies, the company behind privacy protocol Nym, is now a step closer to launching NymVPN, which it claims will be the "world's most private VPN."
Nym touts NymVPN's anonymous zero-knowledge proof registration feature—which means not even the app will know who's using it. It's also introducing extra noise at the network level in an effort to combat AI's ability to detect patterns and deanonymize traffic.
It's been a long road to reach the beta phase, said CEO Harry Halpin.
"We are proud to launch NymVPN for public beta testing at Web3 Summit where we first took Nym out of stealth mode in 2019," he said in a release. Halpin gave a demo of the NymVPN at the Web3 Summit on Wednesday morning in Berlin.
Nym was founded in 2017 and has raised more than $100 million from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Digital Currency Group, Polychain Capital, Tayssir Capital, and 1kx. It's best known for its mixnet, which uses network nodes to shuffle and recombine details linked to packets of data.
With NymVPN in its open beta phase, anyone can now register to test it. The VPN offers "genuine unlinkability and privacy that wan withstand AI-driven pattern recognition," the company said.
The antidote to AI, which has supercharged the technical ability to de-anonymize metadata, is noise. Nym says its VPN is the first of its kind to generate extra noise as "cover traffic" to help obscure which users are talking to one another.
It's not unlike how Nym's mixnet works, which disaggregates pieces of metadata, like a person’s IP address or the recipient of a message, and mixes it with other metadata. The resulting packets of encrypted data combine the IP addresses, time, date, and location of many different people’s metadata.
The mixnet is most effective when many node operators participate, breaking apart and remixing packets of metadata. Otherwise it’s like trying to hide in a crowd of only a couple of people. But generating noise at the network level bypasses the problem of needing to scale before there's enough activity to keep all users private.
"The result is a “noisy” communication pattern, effectively preventing network observers from determining who is speaking to whom," Nym said.
Nym is also promising that its VPN won't know who's using it because of its zero-knowledge proof registration. Its zk-nyms will allow users to verify and manage their accounts without ever having to reveal their identity.
"This technology ensures that even the platform itself has no knowledge of who is using the service," according to Nym.
And rather than choosing to sacrifice speed for increased anonymity or vice versa, Nym said its VPN puts that decision in the hands of its users. The VPN's fast mode will obscure the user's IP address and route the traffic through two independent servers.
But the anonymous mode will route traffic through five servers, add "noise," and use novel onion encryption—similar to the technology used by The Onion Router (TOR). "This mode offers unparalleled privacy by making it extremely difficult for any observer to trace your online activities. It is optimal for highly sensitive traffic which is latency insensitive," the company said.