Project focused on personal information protection sir New York
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mixnet technology Zcash 
ZEC
+2.31%
network, in collaboration with Electric Coin Company, the organization behind Zcash. The goal is to enhance privacy by addressing user metadata leaks.
The integration process involves embedding Nym’s mixnet within the Zcash light client library developed by Electric Coin Company. This allows Zcash wallet developers to optionally implement Mixnet’s privacy features. Nym received a $150,000 community grant from Zcash for this purpose.
“We are very excited to see Nym come to life on the Zcash network. Network-level privacy has been missing from Zcash since its inception,” said Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company.
Nym’s team highlighted the pervasive risk of metadata leaks in all online interactions, positioning Mixnet as a solution for protecting this type of data from potential surveillance.
Known for its optional privacy features through “auto-shielding” features, Zcash sets itself apart from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum by complicating transaction linking. Despite these measures, Nym points out that metadata associated with user transactions is still traceable. Auto-shielding automatically moves funds from your transparent Zcash address to the latest shielded ZEC pool supported by your wallet.
However, as Nym explains, if an attacker gains access to a user’s transaction address, they could potentially monitor the user’s wallet activity over time, including IP measurements.
While you can use existing privacy tools like VPNs and Tor, Nym claims its Mixnet solution offers a more comprehensive approach to metadata privacy for cryptocurrency transactions.
Metadata encryption
Nym’s mixnet technology encrypts user-generated data into equally sized packets and then routes these packets through a globally network of mix nodes at random intervals. By incorporating dummy ‘cover’ traffic into this process, Mixnet aims to further obfuscate user data, making identifying metadata patterns very difficult, as Nym claims.
This strategy aligns Zcash with other cryptocurrency projects such as Monero, Aztec, and Near, which previously collaborated with Nym on mixnet technology.
Recently, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Zcash have faced the threat of potential delisting from centralized exchanges due to regulatory pressure. In particular, Binance proceeded with delisting Monero.
Meanwhile, Nym has made clear that the same regulatory concerns do not apply to metadata encryption through VPNs and similar products. “Exchange is clearly not a big fan of on-chain privacy and would like to see the issue resolved. This is not an issue for the NYM token itself, as NYM is a transparent token that provides access to VPN-like services,” said Harry Halpin, co-founder and CEO of Nym.
Nym Technologies has raised $13 million at a valuation of $270 million in a 2021 funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
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