NymVPN launches fully decentralized VPN amid privacy crackdown

Privacy protocol Nym has launched NymVPN, which it describes as the “world’s most secure VPN” and says will help protect users from government, corporate and AI surveillance.

The release comes amid an increasingly hostile global environment for privacy-focused products — one that is seeing governments crack down on privacy projects and demand backdoors to encryption.

The decentralized VPN, which launched on March 13, uses the Nym protocol’s “mixnet” to keep users fully anonymous and ensure no metadata can be linked to any specific user, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph.

Halpin and Nym security adviser Chelsea Manning sat down with Jonathan DeYoung, co-host of Cointelegraph’s The Agenda podcast, to discuss the release, the importance of privacy and how Nym plans to navigate what seems to be an increasingly precarious privacy space.

How NymVPN’s mixnet works

Halpin and Manning appeared on The Agenda podcast back in December 2023 to discuss what was then their upcoming VPN project. Halpin explained that mixnets work by sending encrypted data across multiple servers while also adding “a bit of fake data” to throw off whoever may be attempting to surveil the traffic, such as an advanced AI algorithm.

“Each packet is like a card, and it like shuffles the pack of cards and then sends it to the next server and sends it to the next server,” Halpin explained.