Nym Live from Ukraine!

Nym team in full force at Blockchain Week in Kyiv

Author: Nym

June 27, 20245 mins read

Nym team in full force at Blockchain Week in Kyiv

Nym had an amazing time last weekend in Ukraine for Blockchain Week in Kyiv.

Languages: Русский // 中文 // Türkçe // 日本 // Française // українська мова // Bahasa Indonesia // Español // Português // Tiếng Việt

Members of the Nym core team — including Harry Halpin, Nym’s co-founder and CEO — got to meet and speak about digital privacy surrounding blockchain with crypto, hacker, and Nym enthousiasts.

In addition to troubleshooting with like-minded privacy-advocates on the state of the world, Nym also showcased the coming NymVPN app. With a new sandbox interface, event participants got to try out NymVPN which started alpha testing last month. Participants were also shown how easy it can be to run a NymNode and be an active part of the Nym privacy ecosystem.

Here’s a breakdown of the many talks and events over the weekend. Check out the links to watch the talks by Harry and crew, including how AI is being used to empower digital war machines.

Testing NymVPN

Bitcoin Meetup

The first step on the Nym tour was the Bitcoin Meetup organized by Victoria Zaichenko on 20 June. Harry gave a keynote address on how tracking, profiling, and other anti-privacy measures impact the anonymity of Bitcoin users and their transactions. Companies like Chainalysis can link a company or individual to their wallet, and network traffic analysis technologies continue to compromise the privacy of crypto transactions.

Harry broke down how we can counter these tracking efforts to secure the privacy of your wallet. Most importantly, he showed how the Nym mixnet can protect crypto wallets from transaction linkage to IP addresses and locations better than existing network technologies.

Harry Halpin with RawBox team and the meetup organizer, Victoria Zaichenko

Nymja Oleksky also presented on their RawBox project, an ultra-private router developed by their team in Ukraine. The RawBox can do many things, including allowing local communities to share and economize on the same privacy-protected bandwidth, and even provide mobile protections for activists and journalists while traveling in high-risk zones.

KyivETh Hackathon

For the KyivETH Hackathon on 22 June, Harry gave a talk on the privacy vulnerabilities of Ethereum-based wallets like MetaMask. At the network level, metadata leaks through centralized third parties (Infura) that MetaMask relies on by default. Fortunately, Nym is working on integrating the Nym mixnet with MetaMask and other popular cryptocurrency wallets to provide seamless anonymity in applications you already use.

Watch Harry’s KyivETh talk here!

Harry Halpin discussing the Nym mixnet

Nym Meetup with KEC

On Saturday, Nym also organized a Nym Meetup with the Kyiv Etherium Community (KEC). Nym’s own front-end Developer Yana Matrosova gave a talk on the Nym Squad League, and then tested the upcoming NymVPN live with Nym Ambassador Volodymyr.

A Nym community member and RawBox contributor did a run-through on how to install and run a Nym node. And Oleksky, the founder of the RawBox, gave a compelling presentation visualizing how Nym Meetup members traffic data is visible while using NymVPN and without it.

Yana Matrosova presenting NymVPN

Harry presented on the “Present and Future of Nym.” The talk covered a wide-range of crucial topics, including why “the internet is broken,” why we all need anonymity online, and how the Nym mixnet can help us stay anonymous in what we do better than any existing technology. He went into detail on the projected course of the Nym project, its scalability and goals, and what to expect next. Be sure to check out the talk to understand the advancement of Nym’s concrete developments in providing genuine privacy for everyone.

Volodymyr with Harry Halpin and Yana Matrosova

Watch all the Nym Meetup talks here!

And Yana’s live reporting on the presentation and participants

Incrypted Conference

For the Incrypted Conference on 23 June, Nym ran a booth with much-loved merch! Nym left empty handed, but find our swag at upcoming events.

Meanwhile, Harry gave a very well-attended keynote talk on “Surveillance and AI in times of war: How NymVPN can help!” AI is all the rage, but what we don’t see is how its developments are making data surveillance much easier, and even deadly. When it comes to war technologies like drones, which are now regularly powered by AI-identification algorithms, surveillance is no longer simply about privacy: it’s a question of life or death for many.

Incrypted audience for Halpin talk.

Watch Harry’s Incrypted talk here.

And of course, Yana’s deligent reporting on the event.

The Nym community

A big part of participating in a great event like the Blockchain Week is being able to spend time and discuss with Nym community members, present and to come. The Ukrainian contingent has been a really influential and integral part of the Nym community since the beginning, so being there in support of them was truly an honor.

Nym was able to demonstrate the upcoming NymVPN with test users live via the new sandbox interface to show how NymVPN works step-by-step. But also how anyone who wants to build a private web can be a part of the the Nym project by running a node.

But for us Nym devs, what mattered most was to hear face-to-face, and face-to-interface, how what we’re developing might help others, in Ukraine and everywhere. It’s with this feedback that the Nym privacy network, and the first product to run on it, can genuinely provide seamless anonymity for everyone when they need it the most.

And of course, there were Ukrainian treats!