You spoke, we listened: Nym transformed

---

The Nym core team is closing off the first half of 2023 with some exciting changes to the organisation. Over the past quarter, we have conducted a range of polls and interviews with Nym stakeholders, and we are now implementing the changes needed for us all to gear up for achieving the next major milestones — mass adoption.

This entails empowering the growing Nym community to contribute with this primary objective. And it entails focusing the organisation into two cross-functional teams to drive adoption: The NymVPN team to enable end-user adoption; and the Nym SDK team to enable B2B adoption, integrations and most importantly, growing the Nym developer community.

The usability and health of the NYM token is a focus across teams to ensure that the Nym mixnet can grow and be sustainable as it meets demand.

Some of you will have noticed the phenomenal results of these changes already: our communities have grown by the tens of thousands over the past month and interest in integrating Nym is skyrocketing!

So, what is happening exactly?

The new structure of Nym core cross functional teams is supporting additional important changes, responding to some of the pain-points that came up in the surveys. There were a few overarching trends, namely: community empowerment, more marketing, improved transparency, clear use-cases and support for the token.

Each of these areas are being addressed in the following ways…

1 Community empowerment

The Nym community is growing, not just in size but also in maturity. It is therefore important that there is something for everyone — ways to contribute and be involved in meaningful ways — whether you are a n00b or a Nymja. In order to facilitate meaningful involvement as well as opportunities for development within the Nym ecosystem here is some of the focus areas:

• Community grants program
• Regular community activities for all levels and regions
• Improved onboarding to Nym mission and technologies
• Preparing Shipyard Academy 2.0

Furthermore, Nym Head of Communities, Sudo, has been updating the Nym core team on a weekly basis on the excitement, interests, questions and concerns of the community so that there is a continuous, meaningful feedback loop — beyond bug-reports.

2 Marketing

Another repeated request in the surveys was for more marketing activities. The core Nym marketing team has had some important hires that have boosted efforts in that area — the results of which are already showing:

• Nym Twitter has doubled from around 60k to more than 120k followers
• Nym Discord has seen an additional three thousand community members join, bringing the server to more than 12K
• The main Nym Telegram group is now nearly 23k

Welcome to all the new joiners! Find out more about Nym community channels here.

3 Transparency

Some respondents felt there was a lack of transparency on Nym business as well as technical development. In order to address this, Nym core is focusing on the following areas:

• Better release notes and changelogs
• Swift and clear handling of issues raised on Github
• Growing Nym technical community by improving SDKs, docs and developer portal as well as boosting the Devrel team and opening new communication channels on Element.
• Maintaining a regular development process — the SDK team is aiming for average weekly releases
• Providing regular roadmap updates to the community via a Community Town Hall

4 Use-cases and usability

More clear use-cases and improved usability also came up in the survey and interviews. This has led to audience research and persona development. Nym OGs at Pineapple proxy have contributed significantly to this work already via a community grant to develop personas and user requirements for the NymConnect and VPN use-cases. This is happening in collaboration with the Nym UX team, who are delving into UX issues across teams, ensuring a better experience across the protocol, interfaces and website.

Furthermore, the Nym value proposition is being refined for specific use-cases and ecosystems, from chat apps to the Ethereum, Cosmos and z-cash ecosystems. This is already leading to increasing interest in integrations by wallets as well as for validator privacy.

5 NYM token

Finally, pain points around the usability of the token came up a number times in the survey. The availability of the token and in particular bridging between ERC20 and native NYM tokens was mentioned a few times. And here is what we are doing about it:

• Focusing on new listings to support token availability
• Exploring how to support better transfers of tokens across chains
• More guides on Nym utility and token economics including moving across chains
• Support for Side protocol partnership

The next half a year many of these changes will come into fruition, with the aim of growing a flourishing privacy ecosystem!

Read the Nym newsletter for more updates from the past month!

Join the Nym community

Twitter // Discord // Telegram // Element

These are some of the activities that you will find in the Nym community…

Fortnightly Nym DevRel AMAs — Every second Wednesday, the Nym DevRel team jumps on stage to answer community questions about our tech and infrastructure from node runners, developers, and anyone else interested in the nitty gritty of the Nym network. The AMAs are scheduled and held on the Nym Discord server. Catch us live next time and listen in, and ask your questions if you have any! Listen to previous episodes here.

Weekly Telegram quizzes — Every week you can test your knowledge on Nym and earn rewards in the process! Keep an eye on the official Nym telegram channels for quiz announcements, read up on the topic given, and take a quiz in your own language! The competition is fierce — make sure to do your homework.

Fortnightly Nym community calls — Nym community has bi-weekly community calls with news roundups to catch you up on what the team has been up to. Guests from the Nym core team and other projects alike explore key issues and priorities for the Nym ecosystem, privacy, web3 and more.

Community calls are free to join every Friday on the Nym Discord server! Listen to previous episodes here.

Nym Delegations Program — The Nym Delegations Program kicked off to support the community-operated Nym privacy infrastructure. Over the past month, we’ve made significant strides in decentralising the Nym mixnet both in terms of geo location, and VPS providers.

In total, over 8M NYM tokens were delegated from the Nym Treasury to the selected nodes earlier this month. Due to the high number of outstanding submissions, instead of the originally planned 25 nodes, 41 participants were onboarded to the program. A warm welcome to all!

Ongoing Nymja Ambassador Program — Nym’s vision is for a decentralised privacy system that will be operated, sustained and supported by people worldwide. The ambassador program was introduced to reach such talent across the globe.

‘Nymjas’ are individuals who can grow and nurture the Nym community, closely follow the latest news and events, and co-create a fun, supportive and collaborative environment across all community channels.

The hunt for new Nymjas is still in full swing! Check out this blog post to see how you can join now.

One last thing…

Discord contributor: currypto