Nillion

According to Nillion, the network's Nil Message Compute (NMC) Web3 system is an upgrade over an antecedent technology known as Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC). Unlike SMPC, in an NMC network, nodes are not required to communicate with each other. Unike blockchain, nodes do not use immutable ledgers to store transaction data.

Because NMC is purpose-built for decentralized secure storage and computation, it enables new use cases on Nillion's native network while benefitting existing blockchains. NMC allows nodes in a permissionless, decentralized network to compute information in a non-blockchain, secure, and verifiable way without necessitating them to send messages to one another.

The lack of need for inter-node communication means the network nodes can perform computations in a fault-tolerant and decentralized manner at near client-server speed. The applicability of NMC lies in distributed computation between trustless nodes with special non-blockchain properties, such as information-theoretic security.

Nillion claims that its network has been designed to accomplish the following objectives:

• Render both computational encryption and centralized storage of private data obsolete
• Fundamentally change how information is stored and processed
• Function as a meta-layer that provides additional functionality to existing blockchains
• Enable new applications on its native public network

In addition, Nillion can facilitate improved bridging, private transactions, and decentralized trading across many blockchains, in order to provide more design space for decentralized finance (DeFi) and other dApps.

Technical overview of Nillion's blockchain platform

Nillion enables users to have full control over identity data, which is stored in unidentifiable fragments across a decentralized network that can only be reconstructed by the user. As a result, users can meet KYC and AML regulations without revealing their identity and with the option to revoke or withdraw permissions at any time.

Nillion tools can gate access to NFT metadata or underlying content, giving minters and owners of NFTs the option to select who can see or interact with them, which can be used to set up code-enforced private NFT collections.

Nillion can also be used to support decentralized anonymous voting. In such a system, participants would cast their votes, which would then be transformed into particles and distributed across the Nillion network. The Nillion nodes would process the votes on a local level to count them and obtain a particle from the result. The particles would then be exchanged to enable all the decentralized autonomous organizations' (DAO) parties to see the vote count without revealing any information about the participating voters.

Nillion's technology allows networks to legally store identity data in a GDPR-compliant manner. Blockchains are unable to do so because of their immutability, which stores a unique hash of an identity while also not allowing the right for an individual to be forgotten.

Nillion's eSignatures include code-protected assurance verification via biometrics. With this technology, an extra layer of biometric security can be added on top of any digital signature without compromising the signer's privacy.

According to Nillion, the platform can secure a wide variety of data types, including private keys, two-factor authentication, metadata, banking information, corporate secrets, protocol funds access, formulas, customer databases, wills, deeds, and certificates. NMC keeps the private keys in dispersed form and is able to sign transactions and interact with decentralized applications (dApps) without needing to reconstruct the keys on a centralized server.

Dr. Miguel de Vega's "Introduction to Nillion" presentation at Cambridge University