The new Binance Launchpool project is Nillion, and I can assure you that aside from a few friends who have heard about the airdrop, 99% of the friends reading this post have never heard of it.
So
Why do I say that Nillion $NIL should be the top-tier project with the largest information gap between Chinese and English? This is evident.
As for why it is a top-tier project, the reason is simple: its primary market valuation is at least over 600 million, and it has significant community consensus in the English-speaking market. It can be said to be the main protocol in the field of privacy computing.
Additionally, I have some personal observations that I will share in this article.
1. The difficulty for institutions to invest is one reason I call this project 'top-tier'.
Because I work in VC myself and have seen 90% of the projects, they are all VC-related businesses, taking any opportunity that comes along as long as it has money.
Protocols with thresholds are a small part of the market, and Nillion happens to be one of them.
Based on my observations in the market, during the last bear cycle, around 2022-2023, the projects that were hardest to get into could be said to be Nillion. To such an extent that you had to write articles to apply, and the project team also looked at whether you had contributed (this will be discussed later, as it relates to airdrops).
Later, it was basically more popular in the English-speaking area. I only learned about this project for the first time around 2024. As a research-oriented blogger, I rarely see agreements on large financing tiers.
2. Airdrops are related to contributions.
Well, this is also derived from market-related news. The core of airdrops is two words: contribution.
This airdrop was very strictly filtered by the project team, considering only one thing: whether you have contributed to the project. If you are only here for the airdrop, it won't work.
It's not about how long you've been idling or how long you've been running nodes; rather, it's about whether you are genuinely part of the community of this project. However, the specific boundaries are a bit difficult to judge (because the requirements are really high, and many people have been countered).
I have mentioned before that the community before and after the TGE represents two different ideologies. Most protocols before the TGE were focused on profit from airdrops, but the community established after the TGE is not only about financial support but also has a solid spiritual core and is genuinely productive.
3. What does the project do?
After such a long introduction, let's talk about something more related to the project.
First of all, Nillion is engaged in privacy computing, and its core concept is called blind computing, which means it allows calculations to be performed on encrypted data.
How to understand?
For example, you want to know the average salary between you and your friend, but you don't want to directly tell each other your salaries because it involves privacy.
Traditional methods (not using blind computing):
You tell your friend your salary, for example, 100,000 yuan;
Your friend tells you his salary, for example, 120,000 yuan;
You calculate the average salary: (100,000 + 120,000) / 2 = 110,000 yuan.
In this process, you and your friends have both exposed your salaries, resulting in a violation of privacy.
Blind computing method (using Nillion):
You encrypt your salary (100,000 yuan) by adding a random number (50,000 yuan), resulting in 150,000 yuan.
You tell your friend your encrypted salary (150,000 yuan).
Your friend adds his salary (120,000 yuan) to the random number you provided (50,000 yuan), resulting in 170,000 yuan.
Your friend adds the two encrypted salaries: 150,000 yuan + 170,000 yuan = 320,000 yuan.
Your friend divides the total (320,000 yuan) by 2: 320,000 yuan / 2 = 160,000 yuan.
Your friend subtracts the random number (50,000 yuan) from the result: 160,000 yuan - 50,000 yuan = 110,000 yuan.
Ultimately, you arrived at an average salary of 110,000 yuan, but during this process, neither you nor your friend directly exposed your salaries. This is the core idea of blind computing: performing calculations on encrypted data, obtaining results, and then decrypting them to protect the privacy of the data.
4. The role Nillion plays in the computation process.
Nillion acts like a trusted third party, providing a set of tools and protocols that allow you and your friends to safely perform the aforementioned blind computing process. Nillion ensures that the encryption and decryption processes are secure, and no one can steal your salary information.
I think the example above can help you understand the concept of privacy computing in a very straightforward way by adding a random number to obtain results while ensuring privacy.
The actual operation of Nillion is even more private; the examples given above could actually reverse engineer privacy. In the real computation process, one side finds it difficult to reproduce the reverse engineering step.
Blind computing is like a 'black box'; you put the encrypted data into the black box, which performs calculations without decrypting the data and then outputs the encrypted result. After you decrypt the result, you can obtain the information you want without exposing the original data.
5. Application Scenarios
The application scenarios of Nillion are very broad, mainly discussing the popular AI segment, utilizing blind computing:
You can personalize AI, securely train and infer AI models.
The data fed to the AI can yield results while ensuring privacy, which is very important because there is a significant gray area in AI data currently. Nillion actually provides a solution for this.
In addition, the derived secure data storage is another scenario related to AI.
Above
