Nym Squad League: Summer Highlights

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Another season of projects and reward comes to a close as a new one opens

The world needs more heroes! The Nym Squad League is a framework for anyone to join the Nym community, grow their skills, and start contributing to Nym’s core mission: to enable privacy for all of humanity.

The 2024 Summer Season has come to a close, so let’s look at all that was achieved by the Nym community over the past three months. You can read the full report here for a full breakdown of the Nym Squad Wealth Fund’s performance, all community contributions and promotions, and the Nymster leaderboard. A full update is also provided for the Nym community treasury: Squad Wealth Fund. In the meantime, here’s some highlights.

Seasonal objectives

The Nym community had the following key objectives for the Summer Season:

1. Advancing the Alpha and boosting the free beta of NymVPN
2. Strengthening and optimizing the Nym network
3. Developing tools and apps on the Nym mixnet
4. Growing and strengthening the global Nym community

Let’s take them in order and see how we did!

1. Advancing the Alpha, boosting the beta of NymVPN

NymVPN is the first user-facing commercial app to run on the Nym mixnet. It brings powerful privacy protections to ordinary people while also generating income for Nym node operators. The launch is around the corner, and the Nym community has been busy testing the app on different platforms, submitting valuable feedback and reaching new audiences.

• The community organized and attended 19 events this season to reach new audiences with NymVPN and share the Nym vision
• Over 5,000 NymVPN credentials were activated for NymVPN Beta testing
• Nym received nearly 400 pieces of feedback and counting in the form of bug/issue reports, feature requests, and performance reports (not including many great ad-hoc reports on Nym community channels)

Wins: With ongoing testing and feedback, the Nym community continues to play a key role in preparing NymVPN for its commercial launch.

Areas of improvement: Fun, accessible, yet impactful options are needed so anyone can get involved in testing, from the greenest Nymster to the most veteran Shinobi.

2. Strengthening and optimizing the Nym network

The Nym node community worked diligently to optimize the network, ensuring that it meets the high standards required for launch.

• The majority of node operators successfully migrated to the new binary
• Operators learned how to configure VPS to manage IP tables and support WireGuard traffic
• The community’s choice of a 20% minimum profit margin has been implemented
• The network now has exit nodes in 30+ countries, with most operators having now implemented web secure sockets

Wins: WireGuard is almost fully enabled, with the exception of Windows clients, resulting in better configuration and significant improvements in network performance.

Areas of Improvement: Enhanced operator tooling and more detailed information on operator rewards are needed.

3. Developing tools and apps on the Nym mixnet

During the Summer Season, the NSL focused more heavily on encouraging builder grants after under-utilization in the Spring Season. As a result, we saw increased proposal submissions: several projects have already started, with more planned for the upcoming fall season.

• Nymja.ai: Developed by the TupiNymQuim community squad, this privacy-preserving AI chat bot leverages the Nym mixnet for anonymous access.
• Delegation Tracker: Community member bumpmeup created a Telegram bot for real-time updates about the performance of Nym nodes where your NYM tokens are staked.
• Node Operator Tooling: Community contributor Kaled is collaborating with the Nym team on researching and building node operator tooling.
• Nym Delegations Program CRM: Further improvements are planned for the CRM developed by Shinobi contributor Pawnflake.

Wins: Increased project proposals and ongoing initiatives following our focus on builder grants.

Areas of Improvement: The builder grant lacks specific direction, making it too generic. Next season, we plan to introduce more targeted Requests for Proposals (RFPs).

4. Grow and strengthen the Nym community

The Nym Squad League opened to new joiners in the Spring season. The program has seen over 300 new registrations since then, and the majority of new participants remained active throughout the season. The list of contributions grew longer this season from 52 to 60, with squads and individual contributors stepping up to fill important roles: community management, technical mentorship, and translations.

Wins: Continued growth of the NSL, increasing the quantity and quality of contributions.

Areas of improvement: Simplify the NSL so it is easier for new joiners to understand.

Tracking the Squad Wealth Fund

And for all you data enthusiasts, here’s where the how the Squad Wealth Fund is advancing.

Staking

Income and spending this season

Squad Wealth Fund (SWF) revenue comes from the Nym Delegations Program. The maximum budget dedicated to delegations has been increased by 25% from 32m to 40m NYM, however most of the additional funds were kept in reserve for the duration of the Summer Season. Squad Wealth Fund income remained largely the same this season, however spending increased from 261k NYM to 428k NYM from the Spring to Summer Seasons.

Despite the increase in spending, the SWF maintained a positive ending balance for the summer season at 57k NYM. While this marks a decrease compared to previous seasons, with a final war chest of 723k NYM the SWF remains in a solid position to allow for further scaling of the NSL and support of future community initiatives.

Here is a breakdown of payouts by category:

For a more detailed breakdown of Squad Wealth Fund income and spending, please read the Summer Season report.

Contribution highlights

We saw tremendous contributions this season. Here are some highlights with our favorite photos of the season. The complete list of contributors is attached as Annex A at the end of this report.

NymVPN Workshop at École 42 Rio, Brazil

Nym community call in Spanish — 6 episodes of “El Rincón de la Privacidad”

Hack Wars at Chandigarh University, India

Telegram mixnode monitor bot

What’s next?

The Fall Season of the NSL starts on 14 October 2024. It will last for three months until the end of 2024. This seasonal structure allows the core team and community to iterate and improve on focus and missions. Upcoming improvements will include:

• Supporting builder grants with RFPs: NSL doubled down on builder grants for the summer season, yielding more proposals than ever before and brand new community projects: Nymja.ai, improvements to operator tooling, further improvements to the delegations program CRM, and more. The next step is specific calls for our devs (e.g., to revive Nym Connect and create a chat app using the mixnet).
• NymVPN affiliate program: The Nym community will have the chance to directly contribute to the success of NymVPN by bringing users on board in return for token rewards. Note: the affiliate program will not launch right away with the Fall Season — stay tuned for more information about the NymVPN launch.
• Anyone can apply for grants: Starting with the upcoming Fall Season, anyone can apply for NSL grants regardless of participation or rank.

Conclusion

The Nym Squad League is closing an action-packed and successful season. With upcoming improvements to the Squad League framework, next season should yield valuable contributions to the fundamental right to privacy.

Despite increased spending, Squad Wealth Fund income is keeping the community in the green and continues to build a sizable war chest. This leaves room for the NSL and the Nym community to grow continuously, and supporting larger projects via grants is also possible.

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