Nym Technologies has a reputation for mixing innovative technologies, and the company's leading Developer, David Stainton has a very colorful approach when it comes to talking about it and his career, by extension:

“To be honest, we have been fucking up this Mixnet concept for roughly 39 years.”

There's a lot be said that is interesting about Nym, operating as a technology-based startup which specializes in stealth anonymity which boasts an extensive lexicon of activists focused on activism around privacy and cryptography. They are by no means lightweights when it comes to these disciplines.

So, while the company itself has an extensive list of contacts, what's the underlying objective that it has in mind? It's made crystal clear by Harry Halpin, who was previously an advisor to Panoramix, which was a predecessor to Nym. In his words, the long-term goal is simple: Make the world anonymous.

One of the more recent iterations of this goal? That would be the digital asset and cryptocurrency wallet which was developed by Amir Taaki, who has gained a remarkably positive reputation as a designer, being involved in development for Bitcoin. The wallet itself is called ‘DarkWallet 2.0,' which was given its name from the bitcoin wallet which was developed back in 2014 with a special emphasis of preserving the private status of its respective users.

“We are working to gather some of the top performing academics across the world. All in order to develop a completely anonymous, unlinked cryptocurrency for users to benefit from.”

This is one of the statements that Taaki gave in a direct conversation recently.

The first manifestation of this privacy centric cryptocurrency wallet, Taaki had managed to code up an iteration and application of the privacy-dedicated protocol system called MimbleWimble. This protocol allows for a high level of scalability, it manages to do this by fusing a number of transactions together on the dedicated blockchain. One of long term goals, according to Taaki, is to allow the 2nd iteration of Darkwallet to send transactions with virtually any kind of cryptocurrency.

This makes for a pretty revolutionary step forward, and a pretty profound one when considering the position of dedicated cryptocurrencies and their relationships towards anonymity. A couple of examples of this include Monero, albeit infamously on account of its use for crypto hacking, and ZCash, which has gained popularity thanks to its application by Venezuelans to get a hold of dollars.

Both of these cryptocurrencies have a significant among of emphasis placed on hiding transactions on the blockchain itself, which is useful for its daily users. While this does provide a certain amount of anonymity, the method still allows for this information to be made available at the network level.

One of the examples of this includes segments of information such as location data, and a users IP Address can be rendered exposed for other users to see.

While there are a number of protocols, systems and solutions which can contribute towards cordoning off this kind of information from undesirable sets of eyes, examples being Tor or VPNs, they have their respective advantages and disadvantages. It's for the latter reason that Nym is putting itself in the perfect vantage point to solve these issues permanently.

The DarkWallet represents one of the first steps forward when it comes to creating a total-ist ecosystem which prizes the anonymity of individual users, all of which Nym intends to support. As the world of blockchain technology advances, Nym seeks to add on from its anonymity system, to add an open platform for applications that have the same emphasis on privacy-enhanced solutions.

For those that are directly involved in the initiative, they see DarkWallet and Nym's initiative as the best foot forward for ensuring the individual liberty within a digital age where centralized institutions are clutching more and more at people's information.

“When it comes to any kind of regime that insists upon a pervasive level of surveillance over its citizens, there can be no such thing as freedom. Especially when that control allows for the same regime to manipulate and control a citizen's actions.” Halpin went on to say. “There is only one way to fight for freedom in such an age of surveillance: and that is to build and use technology which enhances personal privacy.”

The long term aspirations demonstrated in both principle and practice by Nym Technologies is highly commendable for the simple fact that they are wide-reaching in scope. One of the first steps that the company took was to develop a cryptocurrency wallet which could provide a level of privacy for users when it comes to crypto storage and use, while providing coverage on a network-based level.

“There has not been much in the way of progress when it comes to what we could regard as network level anonymity. These types of solutions refer to the ability to, in essence, to hit, not specifically on the level of a blockchain, but on a peer to peer level, allowing for you to redact the peer where a specific transaction is coming from.”

Working as one of the researchers at Inria de Paris, as well as working as a former member of the team behind the W3C, otherwise known as the World Wide Web Consortium. Halpin made his opinions plain and clear.

Taken into consideration, the application of a Mix network allows for this lack of innovation to be redressed by working to obscuring information about who is sending what to whom. This activity also remains unlinkable, even if an adversary user wanted to get a hold of that specific information, and how is this made possible? All it would take is one honest node in order to provide this kind of security.

As a result of this capability, Taaki and his Darkwallet demonstrate an eloquent mixture of networks which can effectively be brought to bear for the cryptocurrency world in order to achieve a far greater level of personal security and anonymity for users. This can go so far as to be a safeguard against adversaries on an international level. This has resulted in Halpin referring to it as creating the ‘Cyberpunk Dream.'

“It is only by obscuring metadata on the network level that you will finally be able to be assured that there is an application that can provide users with a credible level of privacy,” Halpin argued. “If such a product did not exist, any kind of powerful adversary, both near and international, can act to observe, extract and violate your privacy to an uncomfortable degree.”

This is not exactly an opinion that is isolated strictly to Halpin either, Taaki is on the same figurative boat, going on to add that it is because of tools like cryptocurrencies which offer full anonymity that allow crypto-involved enthusiasts can resist otherwise oppressive governmental, private and regulatory forces. Something that is becoming increasingly important as governments take an increasingly stalkerish approach to track privacy focused digital coins.

Taaki would go on to elaborate what sort of battle lines are being drawn when it comes to technology.

“At this moment in time, we are embroiled in a very unique arms race between regulatory bodies that move at the speed of the law, and technology which has the potential to move at the speed of light. And if we have a resolute and fighting attitude, this is a battle that the state will lose and lose badly.”

As we take a number of steps backwards, Nym Technologies has managed to evolve dramatically, helped along by research that was initially brought into commission by the European Union as a result of the revelations oriented around Edward Snowden.

This commissioned work came together in the form of Panoramix, which was a research project made up of a number of researchers across various universities, and has been actively working over the past few years.

Some of the crucial areas of research which Panoramix was involved in directly was George Danezis, a resident author, academic and research from the University of the City of London. Danezis was responsible for the earliest mix net implementations, and was pivotal in the creation of a system / solution dubbed Loopix in tandem with a fellow researcher and colleague, Ania Piotrowska.

“The Nym project will take some of those implementations effectively productize them,” Danezis said.

Originally, mixnets are not necessarily a new concept. In fact, they are a pretty old concept, and were initially formulated by David Chaum almost thirty years ago, and is one of the many projects that was put forward by some of the more revolutionary thinkers of the Cyberpunk movement.

While mixnets are a remarkable theoretical concept, it was later to be abandoned for later concepts and projects such as Tor which would gain a significant amount of popularity as an anonymous system of communication between users which has been in operation since the very early 2000s.

The project itself was initially developed with the objective of being used for email services and communication. Mix Networks were capable of working by taking whatever information is provided and shuffling it.  This means that by the time it is taken, it is rendered unmatchable with the information that is previously entered by the user.

During the early stages of its application, a mixnet proved itself to be rather frustrating for users, mainly because it proved to be relatively unwieldy and expensive to use compared to more traditional systems and services.

According to Danezis, a mixnet was something that proved rather difficult to use in the early years, it proves to be a more viable product now thanks to the ever shifting landscape of economics which underpin the internet. This means that Loopix is now able to achieve higher anonymity for users at the cost of bandwidth in contrast with already existing solutions.

To be more specific, the earlier iterations of mixnet allowed for the break up and shuffling of information through applying time delays intermittently as it both entered and left the system. While this is an innovative method for assuring security, there is no clear understanding as to how long a message would take to undergo this method, as a result, this would come at a higher level of expense for the user.

It's because of this that Loopix retains this kind of time delay, which is otherwise regarded as information latency, relatively low, it manages to do this while making sure it doesn't sacrifice any level of anonymity for the user. Specifically, Loopix manages this by providing a higher volume of cover traffic within the system, this allows for a greater break in the pattern between messages at the cost of bandwidth.

“We work quite hard in order to ensure the latency is kept at a very low level. This means that it will arrive quite fast, but we are going to inject lost of useless traffic. The only purpose of it, however is to serve to confuse the adversary,”

Danezis went on to elaborate, continuing on to explain:

“Because these days bandwidth is far cheaper, it doesn't bother anyone. Having a Loopix connection is going to be far less than watching Netflix of having something like that in operation in the background.”

As the company moves forward, the company intends to build what can be described as a broader ecosystem, each component working with other areas in order to make a cohesive whole that can provide a system that puts the privacy of the user ahead of anything else.

One example of this is Taaki's intention of adding smart contracts to the new DarkWallet, that way, it can swap between various cryptocurrencies. This would allow it to even host otherwise autonomously acting organizations, allowing them to interchange between cryptos.

“One of the preliminary steps in this process is the creation of fast, effective, truly anonymous, and unlinkable cryptos. After this, we can then discuss the prospect of decentralised exchanges and all new systems of applications which can protect the individual's identity and anonymity,” Taaki elaborated.

For Nym Technologies, there are a number of hopes that it has in providing support to the development of a completely anonymous system as well. One example being the Mix Network itself, which can be used for anything from secure messaging systems to a fully digitalized system of voting.

What helps to tie this whole thing together is the application of a signature based system referred to as Coconut which was another project created by Danezis during his time at UCL. At its core, Coconut conjoined with the use of Mixnet in order to offer a fully anonymous system of credentials. These would allow for any user to verify their identity on the Mixnet, without placing any risks on themselves.

“Ultimately, we are aiming to solve the underlying issues of both Authentication which is maintained in a way as to respect personal privacy. It is this, in tandem with providing a secure means of transport that does not lead to the accidental leaking of private information. This is the underlying idea for privacy focused services,” Danezis stated.

This kind of system can then be put to use in the act of authenticating users as they attempt to access various services, Danezis explained. This also provides an effective method of protecting the Mixnet system against otherwise illicit Sybil based attacks. Along with this, it can also be put to work in providing an interesting form of incentive for the services of the future on the ecosystem.

“It makes for a very interesting, if not generic infrastructure, but it is one that doesn't honestly care what is being done with it, as long as the application itself emphasises the preservation of security. Because of this, there is no limit to what you can do,” he concluded.

It is in this pursuit, Halpin explained that the cryptocurrency industry is in a unique and rare position compared to other industries. While the money has rarely been there for technology companies that placed their focuses on the enhancement of personal privacy online, developments on blockchain allow for these initiatives to gain international capital they would not have otherwise obtained on a local, or more ‘retro' funding structures.

“That has never been possible before this moment in history. It’s a very special moment to be alive,” Halpin said, concluding: “I really hope that cryptocurrency community really doubles down on cypherpunk vision and tries to make it a reality. This may be the last best chance we have.”

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