Nym Technologies Raises $2.5 Million to Anonymize Crypto Apps

A privacy-centric startup has turned to a private token sale to raise $2.5 million.

The seed round in Nym Technologies involved NEO Global Capital, Lemniscap, Edenblock and others.

Binance Labs, where Nym completed a 10-week incubation program late last year, is also an investor.

"We still believe there are such things as properly designed crypto networks with tokens."

Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin told CoinDesk the company plans to launch a testnet by 2020.

Nym wants to "Anonymize the world," Halpin has said, with software that can be applied to crypto wallets and other mobile apps to mask IP addresses and user data from the network itself.

The token economics of the platform are still under development according to Nym investor Lasse Clausen of 1kx. "On a basic level there will be a staking token," Clausen told CoinDesk.

Halpin told CoinDesk the token will mainly be used for fees, to reward node operators and staking for service providers.

According to Edenblock partner Lior Messika, NYM tokens are basically vouchers for future use of privacy-enhanced services, such as sending a certain number of messages within a messaging service or using a certain capacity of data through a VPN service.

After Facebook acquired the blockchain startup Chainspace, Chainspace founder Dave Hrycyszyn joined Nym Technologies instead. "Here's a privacy project, that's what I like," Hrycyszyn told CoinDesk.