Nillion

Nillion is a decentralized computing network built around blind computing. Most data infrastructure today requires decrypting information before processing it, creating a window of exposure whenever sensitive data is used. Nillion eliminates that window by enabling storage and computation directly on encrypted data, so the information never needs to be revealed to any node, party, or system in the network.

The project was founded in 2021 by Andrew Masanto, a serial blockchain entrepreneur who co-founded Hedera Hashgraph and served as founding CMO of Reserve. The core innovation came from Dr. Miguel de Vega, Nillion’s Chief Scientist, who developed a mathematical protocol called Nil Message Compute. When de Vega presented this breakthrough to Masanto in early 2021, Masanto assembled a founding team including Alex Page as CEO, Conrad Whelan (Uber’s founding engineer) as CTO, Indiegogo founder Slava Rubin as Chief Business Officer, and Andrew Yeoh as CMO. The team’s background spans Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, Google, Amazon, and Nike, explaining why Nillion attracted serious institutional attention from the start.

The network’s architecture has two core layers. The Petnet, or Orchestration Layer, is where privacy-preserving work happens. It uses Multi-Party Computation, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs to process data without exposing its contents. Think of it as a sealed vault that can still perform calculations on what’s inside. The second layer is the Coordination Layer, called nilChain, which handles payments, staking, and network governance.

Nillion’s potential use cases span several high-stakes industries. In healthcare, multiple institutions can run collaborative analysis on patient data without ever sharing raw records with each other. In artificial intelligence, developers can run private LLM inference that keeps both the model weights and the user’s input data fully encrypted. In decentralized finance, blind computing prevents frontrunning by ensuring that sensitive trading data remains hidden until settlement. The network also supports secure credential storage, private biometric authentication, and trustless card games where a shuffle can be proven fair without revealing the deck. Partnerships with Aptos, NEAR, Arbitrum, and Sei show that major Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains see Nillion as a complementary infrastructure layer for handling the private data that public ledgers cannot touch.

Nillion spent its first two years in research and development, then shifted to product delivery in 2024. The team launched its SDK at Scaling Ethereum in April 2024. The testnet went live in June 2024. By the end of that year, Nillion’s Verifier Program had attracted roughly 500,000 active participants who processed around 195 million secrets and secured more than 1,050 GB of data. In December 2024, Nillion launched the Nucleus program to support developers building on the network, offering technical guidance, market research, and fundraising support. The mainnet launched in March 2025. By early 2026, Nillion began migrating from its original Cosmos-based nilChain to Ethereum, enabling a 1:1 swap of Cosmos NIL tokens for ERC-20 NIL tokens and positioning the network for deeper DeFi integration.

Nillion has raised more than $50 million across multiple funding rounds. The first was a seed round in December 2022 that closed at over $20 million, giving the project a $180 million valuation while the broader crypto market was recovering from the collapse of FTX. That raise was notable for happening without a pitch deck. In October 2024, Nillion completed a $25 million Series A led by Hack VC. Other major backers include HashKey Capital, Arthur Hayes’s fund Maelstrom, Animoca Brands, Chapter One, Big Brain Holdings, Distributed Global, and the Arbitrum Foundation. Angel participation came from contributors associated with Worldcoin and Sei. The project’s total investor count reached 49, a strong signal for infrastructure at this stage.

NIL is the native token of the Nillion network and sits at the center of how the network runs. You use NIL to pay for blind computation and storage services. Validators stake NIL to secure the network and earn rewards in return. NIL holders can participate in governance, which means you can vote on protocol upgrades, network parameters, and community grant allocations. The token’s economic design ties demand directly to usage: as more developers build privacy-preserving applications on Nillion, demand for NIL to pay for those computations grows. Nillion launched NIL through a Binance Launchpool in March 2025, followed by listings on major exchanges including KuCoin, HTX, MEXC, and Bitget.

NIL is available on centralized exchanges for standard spot purchases. But if you want to buy or sell a large token amount, access locked tokens, or trade SAFT notes, Acquire.Fi’s OTC and Secondaries Marketplace is the better option for that.

If you want to buy Nillion tokens OTC, you can browse existing listings on Acquire.Fi and engage directly with sellers, or you can submit a new Buy listing with your preferred valuation and token amount. If you want to sell Nillion tokens OTC and exit an existing position, you can engage with active buy-side listings or submit a new Sell listing on your own terms.

Once you submit a listing, Acquire.Fi handles the process from there. The team conducts background checks, sends NDAs, and introduces the counterparties once both sides are cleared. Buyer and seller are each responsible for their own due diligence and payment settlement. Acquire.Fi is not a broker-dealer, but the team actively assists throughout the process to help ensure the deal is closed successfully.