Mixnet maker Nym completes with $ 13 million led by a16z crypto fund – TechCrunch

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Swiss privacy tech start-up Nym Technologies, which is trying to commercialize an old idea of ​​privacy-centric infrastructure (mixnets) by combining it with trendy crypto incentives, has closed a $ 13 million investment. Series A dollars from Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto-focused fund, following a $ 6 million hike we hedged in the summer (also loosely tied to a Series A).

According to Forbes, which had exclusive rights to the final round of funding, the round values ​​the fledgling European startup at around $ 270 million.

Other investors are named as 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 network. by Nym.

Ringing the increase earlier this week, founder Harry Halpin tweeted that Nym’s mission is to “see crypto destroy the surveillance economy in the next few years.”

Although the tweet got him an instant trolling blow on the venture capital investment for a privacy-focused project; and, uh, for taking a venture capital investment from a fund whose investment portfolio extends deep into the surveillance economy – including ad tech giant Facebook and the sweeping crypto dystopia Sam Altman’s (literally) eyepiece, Worldcoin, both of which have rather more in common with fueling surveillance than driving privacy. But hey, nobody goes to VC for this kind of “values” …

We at Nym, who have struggled for years to end mass surveillance without the support of the general public, see the tide of privacy. With the support of @ a16z, @DCGco and many more, I hope @nymproject sees crypto destroy the surveillance economy in the next few years! https://t.co/rRNFSYizjb

– harryhalpin (@harryhalpin) November 17, 2021

According to Forbes, Nym’s test network has around 5,000 nodes and 30 validators at this point – and is expected to be operating at full capacity by the end of this year. Although Halpin told us the test network has around 9,000 nodes when we spoke to him in July. So what the full capacity of the network will mean (in terms of nodes) is not clear.

In another scoop, Forbes reports that the startup hired former U.S. Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning to work on client-side security.

He presents Nym’s enhanced A-Series as a sign of the rise of the store placed on a privacy infrastructure – citing Ali Yahya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, offering the qualified claim that [emphasis ours]: “Encryption is becoming an extremely important part of the Internet today”; and describing Nym’s technology as serving “privacy at the lowest layer as the basis for other private solutions to be built on top”.

You certainly have to wonder how Andreessen Horowitz valued (or, well, didn’t appreciate it) encryption in previous decades on the internet.

Nym, meanwhile, is using the a16z-led capital injection to expand her team size (up to 30) as she prepares to launch the mainnet – which is expected to happen in the coming weeks. According to Forbes, there are also plans to give grants to third-party developers to encourage them to build for the network, starting next year.

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