Nym Shipyard Academy — Welcome to Stage 3!

Congratulations to our more than 300 Navigators for successfully completing Stage 2 of Shipyard Academy! You are the cream of the crop…

Author: Nym

December 7, 20226 mins read

Congratulations to our more than 300 Navigators for successfully completing Stage 2 of Shipyard Academy! You are the cream of the crop. Under 10% of the almost 4,000 initial participants made it this far. You now have an in-depth understanding of the Nym network, its economic model and how they work in tandem to bring robust infrastructure-level privacy to everyone, everywhere.

Here is the leaderboard, and you can find the leaderboard and further information about Stage 2 rewards on our Discord server. Remember: you still have until December 8th (Thursday) 18:00 UTC to submit your social media posts if you haven’t already done so! It is required to graduate from Stage 2.

Stage 3: Sailmaker

During the final stage of your journey to become a Nym Sailmaker, you will demonstrate that you are able to create the sails that will carry the global Nym community across the digital oceans. You will continue learning, but this stage is also focused on building: building understanding by localising Nym to your local community, running mixnodes, gateways or creating proof of concept apps.

You will gain insight into the importance of privacy at a societal level and for innovation. You will learn about the prehistory to Nym and mixnet technologies and what we can expect for the privacy landscape going into the future.

The rest of the curriculum is partly in your hands — soon you will get a chance to steer the ship together with your crewmates. Keep a close eye on the Shipyard Academy Announcement channel on our Discord server!

During this stage, you will:

Learn more about Nym, and how privacy is an intervention into societies that have become addicted to surveillance and pass a more difficult quiz (60% to complete the Academy and become a Sailmaker, 50% to receive rewards)
Continue to spread the word about Nym, its tech and vision by reaching people on social media (Mandatory to graduate from Stage 3)
Extend the Nym infrastructure to underrepresented areas by spinning up mix nodes and gateways in these regions (eligible mix nodes will receive delegations, and gateways will receive Shipyard Service Grants!)
Privacy-enhance new apps by setting up gateways and service providers for a new app to run via NymConnect
Submit Proofs of Concept (POCs) using Nym clients that are good enough to convince our DevRel team (winners will receive Shipyard Developer Grants!)
Or if your talents are with images and words rather than code, write a guest blogpost, create a video, or produce original artwork that localises the issue of privacy and the benefits of Nym for your specific community or part of the world (mandatory for Nymja candidates)

Stage 3 rewards

Before Stage 2, we decided to up the total prize pool by 15k NYM tokens, to 115k. This brings the maximum prize pool of Stage 3 to 55k NYM.

Just like with Stage 2, the final size of the prize pool is once again in your hands! The prize pool will grow as we hit our common goals for this stage together. This is how it works:

Starting prize pool: 30k NYM tokens

Maximum prize pool: 55k NYM tokens

Common goals:

2 POCs making use of Nym clients approved by the DevRel team
10 mix nodes and 10 gateways in underrepresented areas (meeting quality requirements)
1 new app privacy-enhanced via NymConnect
An original blog post or video in a non-English language that explains the use of Nym for a situation relevant to people who speak that language.

Kick-starting Stage 3

You now have an advanced understanding of Nym: the problem Nym is solving and how the technologies are solving it exactly. It is time to bring this knowledge into the context of the communities you are part of: what are the main threats to personal privacy in your country? What is your government’s position when it comes to privacy? Where do you see the Nym vision fit into the picture? Write a tweet thread, blog post, create a video or artwork about the privacy issues of your community!

For our more technically minded Navigators, it’s your time to contribute! Got an idea for an app making use of the Nym infrastructure? Got experience running nodes and want to run Nym infrastructure? Want to see more apps supported by NymConnect and ready to get your hands dirty? These are all in scope for Stage 3 of Shipyard Academy! Start organising with your crewmates today and submit a POC, set up infrastructure in underrepresented areas, or enable new applications to be supported by NymConnect by setting up gateways and network requesters.

A note to Nymja candidates

To become a Sailmaker it is enough to attend the lectures and pass the final quiz at 60% or higher, and keep spreading the word about our mission on social media. Writing elaborate articles, submitting POCs or setting up infrastructure are not mandatory requirements.

However, as we are approaching the end of Shipyard Academy, we are busy creating our shortlist of Nymja candidates. If you want to become a Nymja, it is your time to shine! Whether by articulating our vision to your communities or by contributing to bringing the mixnet to new apps, use cases and regions, it’s time to show off that you are ready and capable to bring privacy to everyone, everywhere.

Good luck to all of you and see you on our channels!

The Nym Network is powered by the NYM Token, a utility token that can be used to access the network, run a mix-node, and NYM should only be used within the Nym mixnet. NYM is not a general purpose payment mechanism nor cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. For investment purposes, do not use NYM but instead look into Bitcoin or other investment vehicles.

The rewards of and participation in Shipyard Academy is only available to individuals who do not reside in locations that makes them ineligible to participate and/or receive prizes, including the United States, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, the Crimea region of Ukraine, the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic. Nym may request that participants provide relevant information as necessary, and can only process payments once cleared by the Nym legal team.