Nym, a Better Alternative to Tor | Hacker News Reader

Nym, a Better Alternative to Tor

nymtech.net

9 pointsaredox13 comments

"Users pay a fee in NYM to send their data through the mixnet. By pledging an initial bond of NYM, anyone can run a mix node."

Crypto is completely needless in this scenario. If you're mixing traffic, you've no need for pseudonymous payments, and creating yet another random crypto means the "reward" for running infrastructure -- only able to be potentially gained once you'e pledged your initial bond, mind you -- is also tied into something that has no real-world value.

Tor works without crypto BS, or needing excuses to say why it's "better" than useless number-crunching.

If your only incentive to decentralizing the network is the currrenly-meaningless "economic" reward, you're going about the whole thing wrong -- some "NYM" neocoin is of little value to someone who has their own infrastructure costs running a VPS for the node (once you've set up your NYM wallet first, of course)

The focus right now is the crypto push, and - by their own admission - not optimizing the throughput, which means node operators face higher costs for less reward.

And also acts as a vector for de-anonymizing.

Of course the "currency" is useful - it's a way to make people share bandwith and engage in mixing as much as they use the network itself.

Almost all torrent websites now require that you create an account and thar you keep a ratio between seeding and downloading above a certain value. Is that a useless rule? Is the ratio a "currency" (especially when many of those websites let you buy a ratio improvement)? How would you do that in an anonymous way?

Citation needed on the "almost all" claim, or you're just making things up. Additionally, there's a massive difference between members-only trackers having agreed ratios, and general-access "torrent websites" like TPB which don't have any of what you say, much less have such ridiculousness as "rules".

I get you love this, but nothing you've said actually disproves any of my points, you've just made things up in a transparent (and woefully incorrect) attempt to justify it.

Most of the torrent sites I use, such as TBP and Limetorrents don't require an account or certain ratio at all.

It's Tor -- but with a cryptocurrency that will make someone else rich.

Sorry that they don't have the CIA as a sugar daddy.

Is there any privacy-friendly crypto compute resource network willing to just drop the BS and use Monero?

Not going to happen because the underlying reason is someone is greedy and is looking to cash out as soon as the opportunities arise, Monero won’t provide that.

How is it better than Tor?

Can Nym tokens be mined from nothing by participating, or must they be purchased first?

Is there any technical reason why the network needs a native token and incentivization can't be made via e.g. lightning payments or similar?

Yes, there is a cryptocurrency involved, but that's self-contained, rewarding uptime and throughput (not useless number crunching), and a way to make the system balance out between users and infrastructure.

It still looks like a typical scamcoin—the investors hold a substantial amount of the coin, and the hard cap on quantity would seem to be a restriction on the growth of the network. So why would a user bother with this?

Except that its not a currency to buy things - apart from using the network. It's not an investment vehicule, it is not a way to buy nor lend nor bet - it is closer to the seeding/dowloading ratio many private torrent websites have set up.

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