a16z leads $13 million funding round for privacy tech startup Nym
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has led a $13 million Series A funding round for the blockchain-powered privacy web startup Nym Technology.
Other participants in the round include Digital Currency Group, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, HashKey, Fenbushi Capital and others, bringing the three-year-old Swiss startup’s total valuation to $270 million. Forbes first reported the news on Wednesday.
The Nym blockchain incentivizes nodes to obfuscate internet data, essentially acting like a crypto mixer — a platform that obscures the trail of crypto transactions to make them truly anonymous — but for online activity. The company claims that its system, called a mixed network or “mixednet,” protects an individual’s online activity from even the likes of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
In addition to network privacy, Nym also offers privacy credential services to allow users to prove they have the right to access certain activities on the internet without revealing who they are using zero-knowledge proofs — a type of encryption method that has drawn the eye of US regulatory bodies such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
