The background of the beginning of encryption services made NuCypher’s early ecological partners mainly focus on data privacy-focused fields such as medical and finance.
Written by: anger
The mention of NuCypher seems a bit strange to many Chinese investors, but when it comes to Curve, DeFi “farmers” know it. In fact, Curve was founded in 2020 by NuCypher’s CTO and co-founder Michael Egorov.
Although NuCypher’s popularity in China is not high, it still has a certain degree of popularity in the West. In February 2019, Bloomberg columnist Aaron Brown pointed out that four “middleware” projects that will be launched on the mainnet in 2019 should be focused on: Cosmos, Nervos, NuCypher and Polkadot.
In October 2020, NuCypher officially launched the mainnet, and subsequently listed on the first-tier exchanges such as Coinbase and OKEx. The capital forces behind it can be seen:
- Founded in 2015, NuCypher was the first to provide sensitive data encryption services for medical and financial institutions. After good response, it cooperated with many banks to develop encryption software;
- In 2016, it received an investment of 750,000 US dollars from Y Combinator, and then decentralized the infrastructure design and launched the native token NU;
- Raised US$4.4 million through ICO in 2017;
- In 2019, it completed 10.67 million US dollars in financing, led by Polychain Capital. Other investors include Bitmain, Y Combinator, Bitfury, Arrington XRP Capital, Notation Capital, Fenbushi Capital, DHVC, Continue Capital and other institutions.
NuCypher Network milestones
NuCypher is a decentralized threshold encryption service network based on the second layer of Ethereum. It provides a set of threshold encryption operation interface and operating environment, as well as economic incentive measures to ensure the correct behavior of PoS (Proof of Stake) network nodes. It is not difficult to see that NuCypher’s core competitiveness lies in the precipitation of cryptographic technologies such as proxy re-encryption PRE, fully homomorphic encryption NuFHE, and end-to-end encrypted database ZeroDB.
The background of the start of encryption services made NuCypher’s early ecological partners mainly focus on areas that focus on data privacy, such as medical and finance. Subsequently, NuCypher will focus on the construction of the PoS network and the pledge Staking ecosystem.
NuCypher network real-time status, source: https://status.nucypher.network/
Interestingly, in April 2020, NuCypher announced the University Staking Program, announcing that it has reached a strategic agreement with the computer science departments and cryptography laboratories of 11 universities to allocate 1.95% of the initial circulation of NU tokens to these partners. Fang promised to run NuCypher nodes and pledge these tokens for at least the next three years.
Obviously, NuCypher’s strong technical and academic background has further enhanced its project characteristics, and has also improved the diversification of pledge nodes, enhanced research cooperation with universities, and attracted technically skilled participants to the blockchain and PoS fields. The cooperative schools are Arizona State University, Columbia University, Seoul University, Stevenson Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, University College London, University of Malaga, University of Novi Sad, University of Waterloo.
Although the trend of ecological cooperation has not been fully announced in the past two years, NuCypher has also launched products and cooperation at the application level. For example, it recently cooperated with the decentralized content sharing platform Creaton to provide proxy re-encryption (PRE) and decentralized node network , And help it improve and develop application functions. The person in charge of NuCypher China also told Lianwen that the team is preparing the latest ecological layout. From recent developments, it can be speculated that NuCypher may announce more application-level ecological projects.
In March 2019, NuCypher and CoinList held a hackathon with a bonus of USD 25,000. Projects that have been launched include paid blog Stridon, encrypted social network Snowden, and encrypted cloud storage NuBox.
Privacy is an important track that has attracted much attention in the blockchain field for many years. Although NuCypher has not announced the latest ecological layout, we can also get a glimpse of which projects NuCypher has established cooperation with through its ecological projects released two years ago. , Understand their strength and current situation, and what changes have taken place.
The ecological project announced by NuCypher in August 2018
Decentralized application areas
Medical and Biotechnology Data Platform
- MediBloc is a blockchain-based personal healthcare information ecosystem from South Korea. It achieves complete information authority control and decentralized storage through zero-knowledge proxy re-encryption and IPFS. Investors include Naver D2 Startup Factory, Samsung Medical Center, etc.
- MedCredits has been renamed MedX Protocol, which is a decentralized protocol based on Ethereum that connects patients and doctors around the world for medical care. MedX-based DApps will not store or control patient health information to avoid the burden of compliance. Partners include law firms Chetcuti Cauchi, MakerDAO, Civic, etc.
- Medixain is a medical architecture based on blockchain, and users can access medical information and data in the architecture. The project website is currently inaccessible, and its CEO and co-founder Simon Schwerin is now a partner in Berlin-based internet consulting firm iconomy.
- PointNurse is a virtual care coordination and telemedicine company located in Nashville, USA, providing point-to-point emergency, primary and chronic care solutions worldwide.
- wholesome.io is an integrated marketing platform for doctors through which doctors can arrange consultation appointments, telemedicine, marketing, e-commerce and other functions. The platform partners include Harvard Medical School, Oxford University, Bridgeport University and other universities.
- IKU Network is a decentralized research organization DRO focusing on biological research and development. It has worked with MakerDAO to use the stable currency DAI in the network, but the project has stopped updating since 2019.
Key management
- Emblem Vault is currently a product that combines different blockchain tokens into one token. It is also a tradable DeFi pool. COVAL based on this product is an encrypted token transaction protocol with tradable value.
Car data
- CarBlock is a decentralized traffic data protocol. The goal is to ensure that car owners 100% control their data through data encryption and blockchain technology, and use the blockchain-based data market to realize data transactions and allow users to realize valuable data .
Location data
- Dataeum is a crowdsourcing data generation platform based on blockchain. The goal is to collect real-world physical data. The project has completed collection experiments in Paris, Barcelona and London.
Genetic data
- Doctor Chain has stopped updating in 2018. The founder is Zeng Jianhua, the founder of Wuhan Huatide Biotechnology Co., Ltd.
Agreements and infrastructure areas
Medical Data Agreement
- Iryo Network is an open healthcare protocol headquartered in Slovenia. It encrypts medical data through zero-knowledge proof technology and provides OpenEHR medical prototypes and private key management services.
- HealthDex is a decentralized health data exchange (DEX) that provides a market for health data providers, brokers, and consumers, and simplifies brokerage business. Currently the project has stopped updating.
Decentralized database
- Bluzelle is a decentralized data storage network. It recently announced that it will launch the mainnet on February 3 and will integrate with Polkadot. Investors include Hashed, NGC, Kenetic, 1kx, etc.
- fluence.ai has been renamed fluence.network, which is an open application platform. Developers can publish, host, run and operate applications through Fluence without a central server.
- Wolk was originally a decentralized database service based on the Ethereum Swarm platform. It currently provides OPEN Set, a physical tracking and positioning product, to help film and television production companies manage the health and safety of staff under the new crown epidemic through a combination of software and hardware.
Monetization of user data
- Swipe is headquartered in the Philippines and is a platform that supports multiple asset digital wallets and Visa debit cards to purchase and trade encrypted assets. In July 2020, Binance announced the completion of the acquisition of crypto startup Swipe.
- Datum is a decentralized cloud storage platform that provides services to individuals, developers, and product managers. Its partners include DIF, Sovrin, and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance EEA.
Internet of Things
- Spherity is a digital identity cloud solution provider that provides services for enterprises, machines, algorithms and data to help join the digital economy interaction. Partners include aws, ConsenSys, etc.
- XAIN has been renamed Xayn, an AI company headquartered in Berlin. In 2018, it was famous for its cooperation with Porsche and received a seed investment of 6 million euros. In 2019, it received investment from IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener, which is dedicated to the development of privacy. Federated Machine Learning (FedML).
Sharing economy
- Origin Protocol is a decentralized sharing economy protocol. Its website stated that a total of US$38.1 million has been invested through three rounds of financing. Investors include Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital, Blocktower Capital, 1kx, FBG, Hashed, etc. In November 2020, its stable currency OUSD suffered a loss of 7 million U.S. dollars due to a hacker attack, and subsequently re-launched the stable currency OUSD and accepted user claims.
Reference
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/266133301244.htm
https://blog.nucypher.com/university-staking-program/
https://medium.com/creaton/creaton-partners-with-nucypher-for-development-and-scaling-33bbe1b82111
https://www.coindesk.com/polychain-bitmain-back-10-7-million-saft-for-encryption-startup-nucypher
https://coinlist.co/build/nucypher
https://tech.eu/brief/berlin-based-xain-secures-funding-in-crypto/
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