Announcing Nym Shipyard

Apply for grants to run the first Nym Privacy-Enhanced Apps!

Author: Nym

July 13, 20225 mins read

Apply for grants to run the first Nym Privacy-Enhanced Apps!

Welcome to Shipyard, the new Beta space for Nym! Shipyard is a place to build and stress-test Privacy Enhanced Applications (PEApps), which are service providers that use the Nym mixnet to provide anonymity for their users.

In order to ‘parameterise’ the Nym mixnet to offer strong anonymity, we need to get some apps running via the mixnet. Many existing apps like Telegram can be privacy-enhanced into a ‘PEApp’ — but we need to run two components called gateways and network requesters to make your regular apps work with Nym. Gateways are the first hop into the mixnet, and Network Requesters are the hop out that takes the user to an app. Scroll down to learn about grants to set these up.

Nym Shipyard is for…

INFRASTRUCTURE WIZARDS who want to run gateways and network requesters to make the mixnet accessible for a broad set of existing applications and users. These are needed to make the mixnet broadly usable and Shipyard is giving Service Grants to set these up - Apply Now!

DEVELOPERS who want to build new PEApps in the Nym privacy stack and contribute to building a vast ecosystem of usable tools where privacy is the default. Hear about the upcoming major grants program or chat directly with Nym Developer Relations: Sign up or Join Discord #peapps dev

EARLY ADOPTERS who are eager to take advantage of the privacy offered by Nym and are willing to try out experimental beta software (that cannot be fully relied on for strong anonymity…yet!) To learn about and try new releases Sign up or Join Discord #product-and-peapps

Grants for running the first gateways to privacy…

The first tranche of Shipyard grants is for gateways and network requesters — which, combined, allow wallets, apps and chats like Telegram to run on the mixnet.

Together, gateways and network requesters provide the bridge into the mixnet and enable ordinary users to begin using the Nym mixnet. In order to slowly onboard users, Shipyard will be granting people running gateways and network requesters for apps and wallets that already work with Nym, like the Nym wallet, Electrum wallet, Keybase and Telegram.

To qualify for a grant you must commit to setting up a gateway and a network requester that whitelists these initial applications, configure your gateway to gather minimum stats and maintain it for a minimum of 6 months. Instructions will be provided of course! (Sign up here). In the meantime, get familiar with Nym docs, gateways and network requesters.

The use of these applications via the Nym mixnet will be experimental at first and will gather stats on usage and traffic patterns directed towards a particular application so we can parameterise the mixnet to provide strong anonymity. (There is no other data gathered — this is a privacy system so we simply don’t have it!)

*Note: the deadline to set up and first payment date has been pushed back by a week to give sufficient time for operators to download new binaries and get set up. The table above was updated accordingly.

These first grants are essential for Nym to start being usable to a broader set of people, and for the Nym core team to stress test and optimise the mixnet.

NOTE in order to get payment you need to get the code up and running for your app of choice by the 15th of August payment deadline! To get full monthly payment per month you need to have 100% uptime and decent performance.

The Nym network has reserved a limited budget for apps, so funding will come to whoever sets up apps first if there is an overload of applications — so apply early and get that code running!

Apply now*!

…and be among the first to provide mass access to network level privacy.

*edit: application is now closed.

For Developers — Upcoming Build Grants

Shipyard also invites more ambitious service provider grant applications for integrations with a broader set of wallets and applications. These could just be apps that already have SOCKS5 support. Apps that require re-compiling and coding can of course apply for more! For the highly skilled and ambitious among you, a fork of a popular app like Signal that runs on Nym could go way above $3,000.

Service grants are just the beginning and part of a much larger grants program that will roll out over the next quarter. Stay tuned for announcements, including large grants aimed at research and larger projects that are looking for funding on top of Nym from the Nym Innovation Fund.