Nil Message Compute (NMC): Commercially Viable SMPC Off-Chain Computation

Scaling
#1

What Does it Do?

For the previous 10 or so years, Secure Multi Party Computation (SMPC) has been under development in parallel to the development of blockchain-based decentralized systems. Up until now, it has been too costly and slow to be commercially viable. Nillion changes this with a brand new cryptographic primitive Nil Message Compute (NMC) - an upgrade to SMPC that allows generalized trust-minimized computation at effectively the cost of centralized server compute, and reduces computation time to “commercially viable speeds”. Finality is instant and confidentiality is a native feature of their protocol.

How Does it Work?

NMC takes arbitrary data and particalizes/shreds/“horcruxes” it, then distributes those particles across a network of permissionless nodes. While the particles enjoy the security of being held in a decentralized, unrecognizable/transformed, fragmented, and Information-Theoretic Secure (ITS) (i.e. post-encryption and post-quantum) manner, the underlying data can still be processed/computed on by nodes at commercially viable speeds, without the need for data reconstruction or inter-node messaging.

Project Goal

Nillion does not aim to create a L1 protocol - instead they want to create an L2 metalayer which not only performs all off-chain trust-minimized computation for L1 blockchains, but acts as an interoperability layer between every blockchain.

NMC vs. Optimistic/ZK Rollups: Is this Tech Truly the end Game?

Off-chain trust-minimized computation at commercially viable speeds and centralized server costs - is effectively the end game to the blockchain scalability problem. NMC claims that it can, as one says, have it’s cake and eat it too, with respect to the technological advances the protocol offers. My question is if there are any engineering trade-offs with SPMC applied in this specific way, versus the end-game for rollup tech which has the potential to reach 10 million TPS at fraction of a cent transaction costs, assuming other techniques to achieve privacy (TEEs, ZKPs, etc.). Is NMC truly an L2 killer?
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Conclusion

NMC appears to be a highly interesting new crypytographic primitive which further expands the L2 design space further. I am excited to observe Nillion’s development, as well as discussion regarding how advances in SMPC will positively impact the blockchain space

WHITEPAPER

The Whitepaper can be downloaded here: Hidden Forces

#2

Welcome to the forum, @dsss.

Would you be willing to discuss some of the new technology you see the project making claims about in a little more depth? It might help to take a look at our Discussion Post template on GitHub to help you expand on your observations a little more since we are currently having a discussion about what a good white paper/industry paper summary might include in the future.

Thanks for helping us analyze the technology claims of a project!

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#3

Hello,

Absolutely! I am still working my way through the whitepaper, but will edit this post in accordance with these templates as soon as I finish. Thank you!

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#4

Looking forward to it! You might also want to check out the New to the forum? Start here post. Maybe I’ll see you in chat as well?

#5

Hi, dsss. Thanks for the link. This sounds quite similar to Wolverine and Quicksilver, and I’d be interested to see a comparison to those systems.

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