What do you think about Nym VPN?

Plobberfroth
Not convinced of what? I’m just showing that some people are too hasty when responding, which seems to be your case.

The Nym project is not new, but I am not informed well enough to answer OP’s question in a knowledgeable and useful manner. My opinion is that if it’s a honeypot, it’s a pretty elaborate one.
It seems to take time to grasp the whole thing behind the Nym network, but it looks promising.

For people interested:

Official launch date: https://nym.com/blog/nymvpn-official-launch-2025
Forum: https://forum.nym.com/
Matrix: #nym:matrix.org

NYM claim to be the only built VPN to make you anonymous in what you do online BUT anonymity is never guaranteed at 100℅

For me, NYM is very similar to the TOR network.

When your run a tor relay or a node if you want, you do it for free, you get in the better days a thank you or a T-shirt from the tor project

NYM don't own nodes but rather rewards individuals or entities by running their own node in the nym network with nym tokens.

Currently there is around 1000 nodes in nym network
Tor has over 6000 nodes

A fast 2 hops connection before reaching the exit node

In TOR network if an entity runs the entry node and the exist node of your connection through the network it's game over for you. It's the same problem with the 2 hops connection from NYM

You can choose to route your traffic by 5 independent servers to reduce the risk of your connection to be comprised but you'll have to be OK with a very slow network

They are just trying to build a better version of the tor network from what I see

As for me, I will stay with mullvad VPN for now. But maybe I'll give a try to NYM later

leafnose in the end one question would still remain why one would, or should, use them over Mullvad, IVPN or Proton?

FlipSid
Maybe I’m too old school, but my only aim was to answer OP’s question, which is about the potential honeypot, and not about the well-established competition.

If I understand correctly what Nym is, its decentralised and collaborative nature can be enough to distinguish it from the apparent competition. It seems to be closer to the TOR network than the typical VPN service. There’s also the community side of it, although it can look like a cult at first sight, or indeed, something shady, related to commercial blockchain.

The account creation process and the lack of XMR for ProtonVPN may disqualify it in the eyes of many people.

What would be the difference between a dVPN as opposed to a regular VPN connected to TOR?

DeletedUser200 They have also got Snowden talking for them:
https://youtu.be/YnyscVTygOs?si=ox2H_V9bzypLROt-&t=904

grayway2 You can choose to route your traffic by 5 independent servers to reduce the risk of your connection to be comprised but you'll have to be OK with a very slow network

Actually, routing through more than 3 nodes does not improve anonymity any further, as the largest risk at that point is if the attacker control both your first and last hop, in which case they can deanonymize you reliably regardless of number of nodes in between. That is the case for Tor, it would definitely apply for Nym as well if they too do onion routing.

I went through their page, some of the entries in their blog plus looked over some of the people involved (technical ones not "pr" related) and I have mixed feelings (pun not intended).. From one side it does look promising based on the concept of mixed networks but the fact they have their own "crypto tokens" makes me feel like they may pull some stupid shit to gain profits via the crypto scam..

While they're few years in (6+) their VPN is still in early alpha, so there's not much to base opinion on.. I'd wait for an actual data proving how this works in practice, not another AI sales pitch..

DeletedUser200
From their web page the NYM team

Alexis Roussel; Alexis is Nym's COO and co-founder.
Before Nym, he established Bity, a Swiss crypto brokerage
and financial services firm,

Ania Piotrowska; She also explores blockchain in the context
of cryptocurrency privacy.

Ben Laurie; Currently, he works at Google as a Principal Engineer.

so a direct link to crypto currency a G**gle engineer and a new "all singing all dancing" secure VPN and its free for now.. Its just too much to believe, I think I will pass on Nym, that's my gut instinct

Hi, happy to answer any questions you have about NymVPN. Disclosure: I work at Nym Technologies.

Plobberfroth not going to register without knowing plan costs.

@Plobberfroth we launched our paid version a couple of weeks ago. You can check pricing at nym . com / pricing.

wuseman They are most definitely not the only VPN that can ping you around different nodes to make it harder to figure out who you are. Proton even has that, I believe.

@wuseman Indeed Proton does offer a multi-hop setup (not by default though). NymVPN offers 2 modes, both a multi-hop VPN, and our signature "mixnet" mode. This mode does aim to hide your metadata, something typical VPNs do not offer.

N1b I think it's shady that they hide their price

@N1b As a new product, we were in a free beta mode. We launched our paid version on March 13.

N1b Over time, it will become more reliable to judge one way or the other.

Indeed, trust is built over time! To jump start that trust, feel free to have a look around our Trust Center, which provides info about our open source code (server and clients), security audits, university partnerships, peer-reviewed papers, and more.

FlipSid in the end one question would still remain why one would, or should, use them over Mullvad, IVPN or Proton?

Indeed! Trust will be built over time, and it's up for everyone to try. Get 5 or 10 years back in time: Why one would, or should, use Mullvad, IVPN or Proton? And yet...

ryrona Actually, routing through more than 3 nodes does not improve anonymity any further, as the largest risk at that point is if the attacker control both your first and last hop, in which case they can deanonymize you reliably regardless of number of nodes in between.

@ryrona while we respect Tor a lot, the mixnet is built with a different architecture. Nym is not just "adding another 2 nodes". Packets are onion-encrypted, and also delayed and mixed with cover traffic to further improve the privacy properties of the network.

angela Can anyone create a node? What is to stop governments from creating 100 honeypot nodes?

Anyone (including you!) can run a node. Nodes can (and will be) run by governments. Limiting these behaviours is done by actively managing our community of operators, and making use of the mechanisms described in the “Reward sharing for mixnets” article (“costs” to setup a node + a reputation system). Limiting the impact of this is done by being multi-hop by default (so one node doesn’t see both your IP address and the destination of your traffic – which is not the case of single-hop VPNs). Users can also limit that by frequently rotating the nodes they use.

In the future we plan to include mechanisms to detect active attacks and penalize/exclude nodes found to engage in active malicious behavior, as well as to limit opportunities for passive (undetectable) malicious behavior through the use of secure hardware.

area51 so a direct link to crypto currency a G**gle engineer and a new "all singing all dancing" secure VPN and its free for now.. Its just too much to believe

The Nym founders also comprise renown computer scientists and cryptographers (MIT/Inria, KU Leuven). Ania Piotrowska designed the "Loopix Anonymity System", the communication system from which Nym originates, and which was presented in 2017 at the USENIX Security Symposium, a renown security conference. The advisory board comprises (co-)designers of cryptography all of us use (ChaCha, TLS 1.3, etc.).

nym-product Do you have any ideas on how to protect yourself against this?

I pointed to the LEA risk in this thread (expand by dots). I generally criticize VPNs for misleading users. Nym seems very innovative to me though and address a lot of the issues that could be pointed out. I hope Mullvad, Proton, and IVPN will also change their infrastructure in line with yours solution.

nym-product btw: It is really valuable that Nym's CEO (Harry Halpin) openly admitted that China has such developed network tracking tools that Nym can't find solutions for it and afraid that this type of tools will also be used in the west to track users.

nym-product thanks for being available here for review. I checked the website again and have some feedback plus a general game theory question.

Feedback: It's not easy to understand from the website what Nym is about. For fact finders it would be helpful to explain the background or link to a more extensive blogpost, e.g. why you claim that Nym is a trustless network. I also checked out your user experience upon payment and was pleasantly surprised that you offer 50% discount when paying with crypto. This is nowhere mentioned on the main page but a huge USP for privacy and Bitcoin/Monero enthusiasts. I had to click through the checkout process until the last page in order to even get this information. If I were you I'd make this clear on the upper main page.

As for game theory: In my opinion the only truly decentralized and trustless system out there is the Bitcoin protocol, as it is thermodynamically secured and now at a point where it requires too much energy to break. For this to work, it had to start very weak and under the radar of big threat actors who could have easily attacked it in its infancy. It also needed a good incentive infrastructure for people to come in and secure it with energy, and it had to be without any premining, proof of stake nonsense or intransparencies to build trust. Bitcoin fulfilled all those requirements and is very popular today.

But this also means such a story can't repeat. Threat actors like governments and big companies are aware of blockchain technology now and will attack any project that starts with similar traits. Also winner takes it all, and most miners wouldn't allocate energy to a secondary network if there's Bitcoin. So assuming Nym has a Bitcoin-like protocol with truly decentralized intentions, it still wouldn't work because of the inherent weakness in the beginning and the pure existence of Bitcoin today. Therefore any new idea that tries to be truly decentralized and trustless has to build on the Bitcoin network (usually as a layer on top of the Bitcoin network, like Lightning, Stacks, Liquid or Merlin). At least this is what I believe.

So how does Nym plan to create a trustless system based on blockchain technology? It doesn't look like it builds on the Bitcoin Blockchain and would therefore never at its core be decentralized or trustless. And how would it protect itself against threat actors? How would it incentivize individuals to contribute protection? Just like with Monero, the idea and intentions behind the project might be great and honorable, but how does it have a chance to survive in the long term?

argante Do you have any ideas on how to protect yourself against this?

Nym's official take on it is https://nym.com/blog/privacy-under-threat-switzerland.

N1b Feedback: It's not easy to understand from the website what Nym is about. For fact finders it would be helpful to explain the background or link to a more extensive blogpost, e.g. why you claim that Nym is a trustless network.

Point taken.

N1b you offer 50% discount when paying with crypto. This is nowhere mentioned on the main page but a huge USP for privacy and Bitcoin/Monero enthusiasts.

Yes. This is a temporary launch offer, the team didn't want to promote it too much. It will be removed within a couple of weeks.

N1b So how does Nym plan to create a trustless system based on blockchain technology?

Let me get back to you with a more elaborate answer.

@nym-product Would be interesting to take a look at your audit reports. Is it possible to get a link to the Cure53 report? The link on your page does not work, and I can't find a report about Nym on cure53.de. https://nym.com/trust-center/Cure53-security-audit-2024

N1b Threat actors like governments and big companies are aware of blockchain technology now and will attack any project that starts with similar traits.

It's possible if the project is of interest to them. However, remember that a significant share of Bitcoin is already owned by government-affiliated entities (so-called "US strategic reserve", seized assets, ...) and big companies (funds, ETFs, ...).

N1b Therefore any new idea that tries to be truly decentralized and trustless has to build on the Bitcoin network (usually as a layer on top of the Bitcoin network, like Lightning, Stacks, Liquid or Merlin).

How do you come to this conclusion? What would make a reputation system more decentralized if it was based on Bitcoin? Wouldn't the above Bitcoin whales have a head start with such a design?

N1b And how would it protect itself against threat actors? How would it incentivize individuals to contribute protection?

Threat actors can (and will) set up malicious nodes in the network (as acknowledged in a previous post). This is addressed by a combination of a reputation/reward system, active community management, multi-hop network configuration, and the choice given to the user to select and rotate the nodes they use.

We also provide extensive documentation on how to run nodes yourself (https://nym.com/docs/operators/introduction), and incentivize operators to run with high performance/uptime. Thus anyone can contribute and "dilute" potential bad actors. How do you see a Bitcoin-based reputation system significantly improving this design?