NymVPN alpha will be available in the coming weeks

Nym is taking a step closer to achieving its mission of privacy for all humanity with the launch of the closed NymVPN alpha version.

The very first commercial application based on the Nym mixnet, NymVPN will give users a toolkit for protecting their data and blocking metadata surveillance from governments, corporations, and cyber criminals.

The Nym mixnet is a unique privacy technology that will now become available to ordinary people. By shuffling your traffic through a stratified network of nodes and mixing the order of packets, your patterns of communication vanish and become untraceable. Built on years of research into mixed networks, NymVPN vastly extends the capabilities of its predecessor, NymConnect. While NymConnect allows users to connect to a small amount of services such as Telegram and crypto wallets through the mixnet, NymVPN offers mixnet access to the entire online stack.

With privacy plus customizable entry and exit locations for geo-blocking resistance in both options, NymVPN will feature:

The NymVPN 5-hop mixnet mode:

• Optimized for privacy;
• Advanced privacy against even government-level adversaries for sensitive use cases like crypto transactions, messaging, and secure email that are not timing sensitive;
• No more metadata leakage of timing and volume of packets;
• Traffic analysis resistance via packet shuffling and dummy traffic in inner-three mix nodes.

The NymVPN 2-hop dVPN mode:

• In addition to the mixnet, a faster 2-hop VPN;
• Optimized for speed;
• IP address obfuscation for everyday browsing, streaming, or gaming;
• Multi-hop by default, going far beyond the privacy standards of most VPNs.

As soon as the applications are stabilized, a closed group of alpha testers will gain access to the Linux and MacOS versions of NymVPN with Android to follow soon after. Windows and iOS applications are in the making.

We will gradually release NymVPN alpha starting with friends of the Nym project and then in batches to members of the waitlist. Newer batches will be added based on the stability of the applications and the capacity of the network to scale.

This will allow the team to gather valuable first-hand feedback and testing data. We started gathering this data at Europe’s largest hacker event, Chaos Communication Congress, in December 2023, four years after the Nym mixnet was first announced in CCC 2019.

A worldwide NymVPN workshop roadshow is also underway - more to come on that soon. Groups of alpha testers are forming from Brazil to Mexico to Switzerland, France, central Europe, India and beyond to further enhance usability. Keep an eye out for workshops popping up in Prague, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Kyiv Ciudad de México, Puebla, Medellín, and more. And get in touch on Matrix / Discord if you want to organize one!

In addition to this vital field testing, the team is working hard on developing zk-nyms to ensure that user payment details cannot be linked to browsing habits.

But that’s not all. Later in 2024, NymVPN will enjoy even more features like split tunneling for routing select applications through the network, a killswitch to prevent data leakage, and censorship-resistance to ensure anyone can access the internet from anywhere, even in regions with strict restrictions. So keep an eye on Nym socials and this blog for further updates.

In the meantime, play your part in the Nym mission of privacy for all humanity. Sign up to the NymVPN waitlist today.