The Defiant

Keep and NuCypher Propose Decentralized Protocol Merger

Move over legacy M&A, on-chain protocol mergers are coming to town. Proposals for merging Keep and Nucypher are live on both projects’ forums. The projects are threshold cryptography networks, which protect information by encrypting it and then requiring a certain number of parties to decrypt it) networks. The potential merge is the first of its…

By: Owen Fernau Loading...

Move over legacy M&A, on-chain protocol mergers are coming to town.

Proposals for merging Keep and Nucypher are live on both projects’ forums. The projects are threshold cryptography networks, which protect information by encrypting it and then requiring a certain number of parties to decrypt it) networks. The potential merge is the first of its kind in that it will produce a third network, a DAO which will be governed by stakers of each projects’ respective tokens, KEEP and NU.

Notably, tBTC, one of the most decentralized versions of BTC on Ethereum, which currently runs on Keep infrastructure, would benefit from NuCypher’s additional 2,000 nodes. The addition would, according to Keep’s parent company Thesis’ founder, Matt Luongo’s proposal post, “allow for further participation and increase network resilience.”

tBTC has thus far struggled with scalability bottlenecks but an impending version 2 (v2) aims to fix that, allowing the cross-chain token to “compete directly with WBTC,” according to a Keep blog post.

If the merger goes through, a successful tBTC, combined with the other threshold cryptography services, which include proxy re-encryption, threshold signatures, and random beacons, may accrue more net fees for the proposed combined network, codename KEANU.

Subscribe to DeFi Daily Newsletter and Get Smarter on DeFi & Web3.

80k+ investors informed every day.