Press Release: Nym unveils zero-knowledge anonymous credentials, zk-nyms, at SXSW

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Development of new privacy-enhanced zero-knowledge tech can revolutionise the identity industry by ensuring anonymity.*

Austin, Texas, USA — Sunday, 12 March 2023: Today at South by Southwest 2023, Nym, the leader in network layer privacy, announced a new privacy-preserving zero-knowledge technology called zk-nyms at a featured session with CEO Harry Halpin and Chelsea Manning (famous whistleblower and now-Security Consultant for Nym).

Combining the key attributes of zero-knowledge technology and anonymous credentials, zk-nyms allows users to selectively only reveal certain information about themselves, such as their nationality or age, to generate credentials. This prevents compromising additional unnecessary and sensitive personal data. Using the strength of cryptography, zk-nyms puts the power of this selective disclosure into the hands of users rather than large companies via decentralisation.

Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies, said: “Identity technologies run the risk of reducing us to a number in a database. Our new zk-nym technology puts the power to reveal your identity back in your own hands.”

The zk-nym technology works like a new kind of drivers licence, except that when showing the licence, only the parts needed for immediate purpose (for example, name, duration of validity and photo) are revealed while information that is not required is hidden (such as addresses or precise birthdate).

Unlike previous zk and identity schemes, zk-nym is decentralised and trustless. The zk-nym technology is based on prior work on what is called the Coconut signature scheme and has now been extended by Nym researchers Ania Piotrowska and Alfredo Rial Duran. Coconut enables distributed issuance of anonymous credentials, meaning zk-nyms avoid a trusted centralised issuance authority.

“We analysed the security of zk-nyms and have proven that this technology offers strong user privacy protection. Moreover, we have extended zk-nyms to provide anonymous payment mechanisms that enable both on-line and off-line payments. Off-line payments allow service providers to verify and accept a payment without contacting any issuing authorities,” said Alfredo Rial Duran, Cryptographer, Nym R&D team.

The first use case for zk-nyms is access credentials to the Nym mixnet, ensuring a person can prove they have paid for and therefore have the right to use the digital service, without revealing name, wallet address or other sensitive information. Other use cases that are being developed include a privacy-preserving KYC process, e-cash and a general purpose single-sign on. In general, zk-nyms can be used to ensure privacy, while proving a person’s right to use a digital service.

The Nym team is releasing a sandbox for zk-nyms. The zk-nym technology represents a breakthrough in making privacy as easy as building a JSON object for programmers, where certain values can be easily hidden (or ‘shielded’) to prevent information leakage. As opposed to more complex zero-knowledge systems, it is meant to be easy for ordinary programmers to use and for people to understand as a list of attributes about themselves.

The core technology behind zk-nyms was previously demonstrated with various kinds of data including being used for proving COVID-19 vaccination status in a privacy-enhanced and decentralised manner with the support of the European Commission via the LEDGER project.

Although the European Commission did not use the technology during COVID, zk-nyms represent a privacy-enhanced alternative to current plans in Europe to build centralised identity databases that could be used to track and surveil ordinary people.

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About Nym:

Nym is an open-source, incentivized, and decentralized platform that protects privacy at the network level of any application, wallet or digital service. Nym protects against traffic pattern analysis and metadata surveillance.

Media Contact

Candice Teo, (candice@nymtech.net)

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