Aptos is integrating privacy platform Nillion to enhance privacy-preserving applications on its layer-1 blockchain network, Nillion confirmed on August 29.
With this integration, Aptos will be equipped to support a variety of privacy-centric applications, including confidential decentralized finance (DeFi), private artificial intelligence assistants, secure social media, private gaming and collectibles, and more, according to Nillion.
Nillion stated,
“DeFi users could benefit from private trade execution or hidden liquidation vaults, while supply chains could enhance transparency without compromising sensitive data.”
Founded in 2021, Nillion is a “blind computation” platform leveraging technologies like multiparty computation (MPC) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to "decentralize trust for sensitive data in the same way that blockchains decentralized transactions," as described on Nillion’s website.
“Nillion’s blind computation technology could ensure that user interactions with Aptos-customized AI models remain completely private,” the company added.
This integration is set against a backdrop of heightened concern following the arrest of Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov in France, which has raised fears of a potential crackdown on privacy-focused technologies that are crucial to cryptocurrency operations.
The arrest “looks very bad and worrying for the future of software and comms freedom in Europe,” Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin remarked in an August 25 post on the X platform.
Aptos, launched by Aptos Labs in 2022, currently holds approximately $425 million in total value locked (TVL), according to data from DefiLlama. The company has secured over $400 million in investments from major players like a16z, Apollo Global, Franklin Templeton, Dragonfly, PayPal Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures.
On August 20, Nillion also announced its integration with Ethereum layer-2 scaling network Arbitrum. The partnership with Aptos marks Nillion’s first integration with a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain network.
Alex Page, Nillion’s CEO and co-founder, emphasized the potential of this collaboration, stating that Aptos’ integration with Nillion will “give developers the tools to unlock a whole new design space for DApps that can incorporate and handle highly sensitive data.”
