Swiss privacy project HOPR Association is rapidly expanding its ecosystem in collaboration with other prominent Web3 projects. HOPR recently announced it has received more than $1 million in ecosystem grants from Web3 projects and has established working partnerships with several more.
Notable investments come from Edge & Node, Dusk Network, Ankr and Harmony, with more collaborations to be announced soon.
Foundational privacy
Privacy is an often overlooked component of Web3 and the crypto vision. Although everyone generally agrees that data privacy is important, it is frequently sidelined behind more popular crypto concepts such as decentralization.
HOPR argues that this is a false distinction. Without privacy — specifically, transport-level privacy that obscures metadata such as the user’s IP address — fundamental aspects of crypto cannot be safely operated.
HOPR’s incentivized and scalable private mix network lets users earn its native token, HOPR, as an incentive for running nodes that anonymously and securely relay data to other network members using the project’s proof-of-relay system. This allows users to send data to other users without exposing vital metadata such as their IP addresses.
The urgent need for this technology is starkly highlighted by HOPR’s DERP tool — Dumb Ethereum RPC Provider — that shows how popular decentralized apps (DApps) such as Uniswap and MetaMask leak vast amounts of identifiable and exploitable metadata — even before making a transaction, and in some cases before fully opening the DApp.
Building the private Web3 future
Luckily, many projects and developers are waking up to the extent of crypto’s privacy problem. This was clear when HOPR attended ETHDenver in February as a sponsor. The reality of building Web3 was a hot topic at ETHDenver, and conversations with like-minded projects soon turned into collaborations and investment, including a spot in the Harmony protocol’s Project X Initiative.
HOPR is also onboarding independent developers into its ecosystem. Thanks to a new suite of API and developer tools, developers can build the first fully private DApp prototypes on top of HOPR. This initiative was supported by $15,000-worth of bounties at the ETHDenver Buildathon, endowed by the HOPR decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
Educating the community
A crucial part of building Web3 is educating people about the importance of Web3 values and providing investment grants. Many of HOPR’s new collaborating partners have contributed to HOPR’s recently launched Web3 Talks series. The first two episodes feature Edge & Node founder Tegan Kline and Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm. HOPR founder Dr. Sebastian Bürgel also talked with the co-founder of Near Protocol in a discussion that will feature in Near’s Whiteboard series.
Holistic investment
Much of the recent discourse on the viability of Web3 has focused on project funding, with many criticizing the amount of venture capital funding in the space. HOPR has already established its decentralized credentials through a fair launch that saw 100% of raised funds stay in control of the HOPR DAO. The team is doubling down on this approach by securing investment from like-minded Web3 projects.
The problem of metadata and IP privacy is prevalent in every layer of crypto, from users accessing DApps via their browsers to the way transactions are approved and grouped into blocks by miners and validators.
To this end, HOPR has announced it will be:
- Balancing data transparency with privacy for node runners for truly decentralized data-indexing and infrastructure provision with Ankr, The Graph and Pocket Network
- Adding essential transport-level privacy to the on-chain privacy of Dusk Network, Panther Protocol and Tornado Cash
- Providing essential privacy to stop layer–0 disruption and attacks on layer-1 blockchains with Gnosis, Polygon, Harmony and Near.
Interested developers can also participate in HOPR’s rapidly expanding bounty program.
About HOPR
HOPR is a layer-0 metadata privacy-protection protocol used to connect devices and the cloud and produce private transactions on the chain. HOPR has developed cutting-edge technologies for digital privacy, layer-0 data transmission and decentralized governance.
Help change data privacy for good by visiting HOPR’s website, Twitter, Discord or Telegram.
Media contact: contact@hoprnet.org
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