On March 20, 2025, the decentralized blind computing network Nillion announced the $NIL token economic model, indicating that TGE and the mainnet have entered the countdown stage.
There are many top-level projects in the TGE in the first quarter of 2025, but Nillion’s TGE still sparked a lot of discussion.
On the one hand, with the entry of Conrad Whelan, former founding engineer of Uber, into Web3, Nillion can be regarded as a star project in the privacy + data + AI track: in December 2022, it completed a $20 million seed round of financing with a valuation of $180 million, led by Distributed Global; in October 2024, Nillion completed a new round of $25 million in financing, led by Hack VC, and the cumulative financing amount has exceeded $50 million.
On the other hand, before TGE, Nillion was caught in a vortex of early leaks of the airdrop plan and early supporters not being rewarded. Faced with the controversy, Nillion quickly launched a series of response measures, including CMO Charlie Rogers publishing articles to answer community questions and quickly launching a new version of the airdrop query tool, demonstrating strong problem-solving capabilities and determination to ensure that the rewards truly belong to long-term supporters, thus turning the situation around and gaining a lot of praise.
Privacy is a basic human right.
In the Web2 space, whether it is the frequent harassing calls/text messages/emails, or the identity information, facial passwords, shopping records, etc. that are sold casually in related Telegram Bots or groups, the problem of privacy leakage has obviously reached a point where it can no longer be delayed.
For this reason, the Web3 privacy track, which aims to break through with the power of decentralization, has always attracted much attention.
As a decentralized blind computing network, what is special about Nillion?
With the start of TGE and the official launch of the mainnet, will Nillion, which is entering a new stage of development, lead the innovation paradigm in the privacy track?
This article aims to take a closer look at Nillion and explore its specific operating logic and good ecological performance, and to explore the future development prospects of the project and the blind computing track.
Image credit: Twitter @nillionnetwork
Make the rules transparent and reassure the community: Nillion airdrop will be launched on March 24th along with TGE
In the crypto world, whether an airdrop can go smoothly has a certain meaning of success or failure for a project:
If the airdrop standards are unclear and witches are rampant, the ecosystem will be in turmoil and the project will be under tremendous pressure from public opinion.
The airdrop rules are transparent, and rewards are truly distributed according to contributions, which can not only bring together a strong community, but also lay a solid foundation for the effective circulation of the projects ecological and economic system and the realization of long-term development.
Image source: Nillion website
Unfortunately, Nillions airdrop work encountered an unexpected episode at the beginning: On March 8, a pre-leaked Nillion airdrop plan was widely circulated in the community. What made the community even more dissatisfied was that many early supporters of Nillion found that they were not included in the airdrop list.
As soon as the negative sentiment started to brew, Nillion noticed the problem and took a series of actions quickly:
On the one hand, Nillion CMO Charlie Rogers’ article on the explanation of airdrop rules provides relatively detailed answers, including the recipients of airdrop rewards, standard definitions, and witch prevention, etc., promptly answering the community’s questions about airdrops.
On the other hand, Nillion has launched an updated version of the airdrop allocation checker in a short period of time. Community members can visit the page to connect to their wallet to view the specific airdrop results, which includes information such as medals and airdrop levels. Eligible members will receive a customized card:
GOLD Level: 1,000 - 3,000 tokens
DIAMOND Level: 3,000+ Tokens
Image source: Nillion Airdrop Allocation Checker
At the same time, Nillion also canceled the original 90-day pre-staking lock-up period, and all pre-staking rewards will be unlocked on the first day to demonstrate Nillion’s commitment to rewarding the community.
In the face of community sentiment, Nillions decisive and effective handling not only allowed the community to see the projects adequate preparation for the airdrop, but also through the clear airdrop rules introduced in the article by CMO Charlie Rogers, we also felt the projects full respect for ecological participants.
Specifically, Nillions airdrop audience mainly includes the following three groups, covering technical and non-technical contributors:
Nillion has also announced specific standards for each group, aiming to accurately identify long-term participants and real contributors in the ecosystem, so that rewards can truly flow to members who create positive value for the project.
Community Value
Image source: Translated from Nillion CMO’s long article “The Nillion Airdrop: Setting a New Standard”
Developers and Open Source Contributions
Image source: Translated from Nillion CMO’s long article “The Nillion Airdrop: Setting a New Standard”
Participation in the Validator Program
Image source: Translated from Nillion CMO’s long article “The Nillion Airdrop: Setting a New Standard”
At a time when airdrops are becoming industrialized and Sybil issues are becoming increasingly annoying, Nillion has also introduced corresponding standards to resist one-click node services that attempt to simplify the mining process and filter out pure wool parties. According to the information currently released, two types of project participants will miss the airdrop:
Low-participation Secret Submitter: Submitted only 4 Secrets; Did not stake any ETH; Did not have any Discord roles (including reward roles); Did not hold Nill Pill NFT.
Low-participation late validator: joined the validator program after September 14, 2024; did not stake any ETH; did not have any Discord roles (including reward roles); did not hold Nill Pill NFTs.
Although some professional wool parties in social media have questioned that one-click node services can also be regarded as a kind of ecological contribution and should not be treated in this way, more people still expressed their appreciation for the series of measures announced by Nillion: with clear standards, transparent rules and a focus on long-term value, Nillion is exploring a new standard for the operation of the crypto community.
At present, Nillion has announced the economic model of $NIL. As the native token of the ecosystem, the $NIL token has the utility of paying computing and storage fees, incentivizing validators, etc., and may also be an important governance tool for the ecosystem in the future.
The total supply of $NIL tokens is 1 billion, and the initial circulation is 19.52% (approximately 195.15 million). The specific distribution rules are as follows:
Ecosystem and RD: 29%
Community: 20%
Protocol development: 10%
Early Backers: 21%
Core Contributors: 20%
Image credit: Twitter @nillionnetwork
Meanwhile, the launch of $NIL tokens will be synchronized with the Nillion mainnet genesis, blind module Alpha mainnet, and community airdrop on March 24. At launch, $NIL will distribute unlocked tokens to the community through airdrops and community round participants.
Of course, such “open and honest” airdrop rules have also attracted more attention to Nillion, a star project in the privacy track, and more people want to learn more about it:
What exactly is Nillion’s decentralized blind computation network? How is it different from other privacy solutions?
Focusing on high-value data and building super privacy tools: Entering the Nillion blind computing network
To simply summarize Nillion’s goal in one sentence: high-value data is stored, transmitted, and processed in a fully encrypted state.
This sentence can be broken down into two parts:
First: high-value data.
The high-value data that Nillion focuses on refers to highly sensitive privacy data that is extremely valuable to organizations or individuals, and can usually have a significant impact on the lives of users, such as personal medical gene data. The leakage of this data can often have serious consequences for the data owner, requiring a more solid security line of defense. After achieving data available but invisible, it can further unlock more valuable application scenarios and build a fairer data ecosystem.
The second is: storage, transmission and processing in a fully encrypted state.
Many privacy solutions aim to achieve the storage, transmission and processing of data in a fully encrypted state. Currently popular blockchain privacy technologies include zero-knowledge proof (ZK), multi-party computing (MPC), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and trusted execution environment (TEE).
Nillion aims to build a blind computing network where users do not need to trust anyone. Nodes can collaborate to complete calculations on data, but the nodes cannot see the plaintext data locally and know nothing about the input data or output results.
So, what is blind computing?
It is actually a broad concept. It can be said to be a general term for various technologies and methods that can perform calculations without exposing input data. It is the product of the integration and development of multiple cryptography and secure computing technologies.
There is a well-known slogan in our countrys reform and opening up: It doesnt matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.
Nillions blind computing philosophy has a lot in common with this quote:
Different privacy computing methods have their own unique advantages and applicable scenarios, but they also have their own difficulties. For example, MPC often faces communication complexity, FHE tries to break through the computing overhead, and TEE is criticized for its trusted foundation. A single solution often faces computing complexity and performance limitations, and it is difficult to balance efficiency, security and scalability, and often cannot meet diverse privacy scenarios.
Therefore, Nillion is committed to building a flexible and efficient development environment that aggregates all privacy technologies: facing different needs in different scenarios, developers do not need to understand the specific information of privacy technologies. The Nillion compiler will help select the best combination of privacy technologies, thereby helping developers easily build applications with privacy functions.
In this blind computing network, Nillion adopts a parallel two-layer architecture design of Petnet and NilChain:
NilChain is like the dispatching center and incentive center of the entire network operation:
NilChain is built on Cosmos SDK and is mainly responsible for node management, task scheduling, inter-cluster coordination, and payment settlement. At the same time, NilChain supports IBC (inter-chain communication protocol) to achieve interoperability with other blockchains. For example, nilChain records the pledge and reputation of nodes, assigns computing tasks to appropriate Petnet node clusters, and handles user payments and node rewards.
Petnet is mainly responsible for data storage and calculation, and is composed of a distributed node network.
As an orchestration layer, the implementation of Petnet functions relies on two key components:
Compiler: Simplifies the use of privacy technologies by providing different levels of abstraction
Computational Networks: Perform secure computations and manage encrypted data
Image credit: Nillion Doc
Petnet brings together various privacy technologies including ZK, MPC, FHE and TEE, and these technologies run in its independent blind modules as core components to perform specific functions. At the same time, Nillion has also introduced a series of practical tools to further lower the privacy threshold and improve the development experience.
The MPC protocol Curl is based on the linear secret sharing scheme (LSSS), which excels in efficiently processing complex operations and is very suitable for solving real-world problems, such as the development of privacy-preserving AI agents.
The privacy technology suite nilAI includes multiple modules such as AIVM, nada-AI and nilTEE, and focuses on supporting the development of privacy AI.
The virtual machine nilVM allows developers to compile programs using the Nada compiler, and then upload the compiled programs to the Nillion Network for execution. Nada is Nillions open source domain-specific language (DSL) based on Python, and is developed using the Nillion Software Development Kit (SDK). It includes multiple components such as nada-AI, nada-numpy, and nada-test, which can help greatly reduce the threshold for building privacy applications.
The encrypted distributed NoSQL database nilDB is designed for privacy-preserving data storage and computing, and can distribute encrypted data as Secret shares to multiple nodes to eliminate reliance on central authority. In addition, data owners can authorize others to run SQL-like queries, calculations, and privacy-preserving aggregations on stored data.
When faced with complex privacy computing needs, Petnet will organize nodes into clusters according to different needs to perform specific tasks. Each cluster can be regarded as an independent blind computing unit, providing data sharding processing across multiple nodes.
Through data sharding technology, data is broken down into smaller fragments and distributed on different nodes. A single node cannot access the complete data set. In addition, by introducing privacy technologies such as MPC, multiple nodes can perform joint computing without leaking private data, while reducing communication between nodes, thereby greatly improving security and performance, efficiency and scalability.
As a blockchain equipped with super privacy tools, the Nillion ecosystem has already taken shape in the testnet stage. The Nillion blind computing network has further confirmed its technical feasibility through in-depth cooperation with major projects. With the arrival of the airdrop in March 2025 and the official launch of the mainnet, the next round of growth of Nillions ecosystem has become the focus of many people.
Countdown to mainnet launch, preview of Nillions rich ecological projects in privacy scenarios
As a highly anticipated privacy + data + AI project, Nillion has made very solid preparations for its mainnet debut during the testnet phase of more than eight months:
Nillion has gone through 200+ investor conference calls, 2 successful testnet iterations, 50+ social media podcast events, and published tens of thousands of tweets. It has also established connections with more than 300+ developers and 178 Apps, aiming to further build a developer-friendly environment while establishing close ties with the ecosystem and community.
In the validator program launched earlier, validators will ensure the data integrity of the entire network and play a key role in maintaining security and mainnet launch. The activity ended on December 11, 2024, and attracted a total of more than 500,000 validators to participate, jointly processing approximately 195 million keys and ensuring the security of approximately 1,050 GB of data.
Image credit: Twitter @nillionnetwork
Through the ecological birds-eye view released by Nillion, we can also see that Nillions ecological map has begun to take shape. At present, Nillion has reached cooperation with more than 50 projects including Aptos, Near, Arbitrum, Mantle, Virtuals, Fractal, etc., covering DeFi, AI, DeSci, public chain, DAO and other sectors.
As AI becomes popular in Web2 and Web3, Nillions blind computing concept is naturally compatible with the development of AI:
Data is the fuel for the development of AI. By protecting user data, promoting data sharing, optimizing model training, fulfilling ethical responsibilities, and promoting technological innovation, the Nillion Blind Computing Network will provide all-round support for the sustainable development of AI.
At present, AI is indeed an important part of the Nillion ecosystem, and more than a dozen AI projects have enhanced privacy through cooperation with Nillion.
As the largest multimodal AI agent protocol and framework at present, Virtuals Protocol established a cooperation with Nillion in June 2024. By leveraging Nillions secure computing infrastructure, it supports private training and reasoning of AI models. When users interact with AI agents, it can protect users private information and ensure that sensitive conversations and data will not be leaked.
In addition, Nillion ecological AI projects include the decentralized open AI infrastructure network Ritual, AI agent protocol Crush AI, etc.
Nillion focuses on high-value data, including financial investment data, personal medical data, etc., which also provides opportunities for Nillions development in DeFi and DeSci.
In the DeFi field, the powerful privacy features brought by Nillion not only protect the data and asset security of users, but will also play an important role in identity compliance, financial innovation, and personalized financial services. Kayra is a very typical case.
As a decentralized dark pool exchange, Kayra is based on order book multi-party computing (MPC) technology and aims to provide a privacy-preserving trading experience. Currently operating on Aleo, Ethereum Sepolia and Nillion testnets, Kayra is committed to providing users with a secure and private trading environment.
In the field of DeSci (decentralized science), the medical and health sector is undoubtedly one of the most promising application scenarios.
Traditional medical research usually faces a very prominent challenge: researchers need access to a large number of diverse data sets for health status assessment and analysis, but most people are reluctant to share their health data for privacy reasons. This not only limits the sample size, but also slows down the research process.
Nillion’s privacy computing solution provides an innovative answer to this problem: through its technology, researchers can analyze health data without revealing personal information, eliminating the trust issue in data sharing.
Currently, this technical feature of Nillion has attracted the attention and cooperation of multiple medical and health projects:
Space of Mind, a platform focused on providing affordable peer support to people experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), uses Nillion to ensure that patient data is private and secure, ensuring that user information is not misused.
Monadic DNA focuses on the security and privacy of personal genomic data, aiming to help users own and manage their own genetic information and avoid the risk of data leakage caused by traditional methods. Using Nillions blind computing technology, users can safely process data and generate DNA passports after uploading raw DNA files, while ensuring that data privacy is not violated.
AgeRate is an online platform dedicated to helping people achieve healthier, longer lives. Users simply collect a small blood sample and send it back to receive a health score and personalized recommendations. By partnering with Nillion, AgeRate ensures that user privacy is protected while giving users a more comprehensive understanding of their health.
In addition, Nillions ecological landscape also extends to consumer-level application scenarios such as social networking and DAO:
For example, Aloha is an AI-driven dating app that helps users present themselves authentically and find suitable matches efficiently. By integrating Nillion’s blind computing technology, Aloha ensures the security of user data and reduces the risk of data leakage.
Image credit: Twitter @nillionnetwork
The diverse ecosystem not only demonstrates the high demand for privacy and recognition of Nillion’s privacy solutions by multiple projects in multiple segments, but also brings users a rich exploration experience in the early stage of the mainnet launch.
With the official launch of the Nillion mainnet in March 2025, its ecological cooperation will be further accelerated, bringing innovative experience of privacy and security to more users.
Conclusion
In the future, with the official launch of the mainnet and the start of TGE, more roadmap plans of Nillion will be implemented soon.
According to its official roadmap, in the first phase of project development, Nillion will focus on launching the main network, and then promote the coordination and optimization of blind computing modules to achieve the early launch of the general computing layer to support a wider range of application scenarios.
In the second phase, Nillion’s main work will focus on launching the validator program to ensure the security and reliability of the network in order to continuously improve the decentralization of the network, while actively promoting integration with other blockchain projects or ecosystems.
In the third stage, Nillion focuses on auditing and certification mechanisms to continuously enhance the credibility and transparency of the network. In the final fourth stage, Nillion focuses on expanding the scale of the ecosystem, and is committed to achieving permissionless network expansion, supporting more users and applications, and launching an ecosystem exploration plan to promote the implementation of more innovative applications.
Image credit: Twitter @nillionnetwork
As a privacy project started by senior executives of Uber and supported by top VCs, we have seen from Nillions past performance that it is forward-looking in product design, ecosystem expansion, and community building.
Through the fully encrypted storage, transmission and processing of high-value data, Nillion aims to build the next-generation privacy infrastructure and is committed to promoting the safe, efficient and rapid development of multiple fields including AI, DeFi, DeSci, etc.
The handling of the airdrop controversy and the CMO’s publication of a long article to answer community questions in detail and introduce the airdrop rules have also strengthened the community’s confidence in the long-term healthy development of the project.
In an era where privacy and data value are equally important, privacy, such as Nillion, will become an important force in promoting the prosperity of the Web3 ecosystem. With the official launch of the Nillion mainnet entering a new stage of ecological development, we expect Nillion to be an important force in the development of Web3 and accelerate the arrival of the privacy era.
