Exchange NuCypher (NU)

NuCypher is decentralized encryption, key management system, and access control for public blockchains, distributed apps, and protocols. It offers a cryptographic infrastructure for privacy-preserving applications. NuCypher was created not for the users but for the other blockchains to serve as a privacy layer. 

The main goal of NuCypher is to simplify the work of data security providers and to promote cryptographic access control and decentralization. As cryptographic access control provides users with full access to their encrypted data it reduces the chances of data misuse. 

The project was founded in 2018 by physicist Mikhail Egorov and software engineer McLane Wilkison. At first, it was launched on the private testnet, in October 2019 it was transferred to a public testnet, though the incentivized public testnet began only after 3 months in January 2020. In October 2020 the mainnet of NuCypher was finally launched and 45 million NU tokens were distributed to nodes prior to the launch. 

NuCypher offers a privacy infrastructure for the decentralized web with proxy re-encryption, threshold signatures, distributed key generation, and other threshold cryptography. It is a layer 2 resource allocation protocol on Ethereum that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to coordinate worker nodes. 

To create dApps on the blockchain-based network both developers and enterprises need to be involved. Those secured dApps can be used by the financial and healthcare sectors as it offers an encrypted content marketplace, secret credentials management, and patient-controlled electronic health records.

NuCypher network runs on a novel distribution mechanism, called WorkLock. Running of one node on the NuCypher network requires no less than 2000 node operators to stake a minimum of 353 913 tokens. The minimum staking period is 30 days, and the rewards are automatically staked after each period. 

With the decentralized key management system, the users can securely store their fully encrypted data on the NuCypher blockchain and have complete access controls. Moreover, the data can be shared between multiple participants in public consensus networks with the usage of proxy re-encryption, which adds up to the system’s security. It makes NuCypher more protected than traditional blockchains based on public-key encryption. The project offers three cryptographic libraries: pyUmbral, NuBls, and rust-umbral. 

NuCypher (NU) is a native ERC-20 token of the project. It is used to incentivize network participants for managing the keys and accessing delegation and revocation operations on the network. The NU tokens can also be staked to run the NuCypher worker node. To avoid malicious staking the system automatically slashes the rewards for the suspected user. The NU coin is also used in the project DAO, so the users that stake the coin can vote for validation of the proposals. 

The total supply of NU coins is 1 billion, max supply is around 3,89 billion. The tokens are being released as rewards to stakers according to the schedule, with 3 335 938 and 4 460 000 coins going to the SafT Series 2 and Team/Equity investors.