2021 has been a breakthrough year for NKN, and we rode the surging wave of crypto to new heights. We grew our market capitalization faster than the overall industry, greatly expanded our network to over 100,000 nodes and increased our lead as the largest blockchain network in the world. We successfully accelerated the adoption of our nConnect and nMobile products to even more markets and wider audiences. And we are well on our way to delivering the ultimate decentralized, serverless, secure and fast Web 3.0 networking infrastructure.
2021 has also been very challenging in every aspect, with the world overcoming the pandemic and the changes of work and life pattern it has brought. Now let us navigate through NKN’s extraordinary progress along the backdrop of this challenging journey.
Largest Blockchain network in the world
In 2021, the NKN network saw tremendous growth from 30,000 nodes at the beginning of the year to over 123,000 nodes across 62 countries and regions. We are clearly leading the race for the largest blockchain network in terms of full consensus nodes. And this vast network can enable true decentralization, highest level of security, mission critical robustness, and massive performance.
In addition to quantity, our node quality has also improved. Several major features have been implemented in our core blockchain softwares, such as the new Generate ID mechanism with token economics, enhanced signature verification mechanism, fast sync and light sync.
Accelerating mass adoption
Coinbase listing and Coinbase Earn campaign
In April 2021, NKN was listed on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange coinbase. And the subsequent NKN Learn and Earn campaign in October was so successful that over 389,000 coinbase users completed the course within 48 hours upon launch.
Global Business Partnership with top tier vendors for nConnect
We have signed strategic partnerships with tier-1 Network Attached Storage vendors Synology, QNAP and ASUS to launch nConnect globally, providing our unique solution of secure and fast remote access to personal users and enterprises. We are proud to help many people who worked from home during the year 2021, protecting them from malicious attacks and security leaks that plagued remote working. nConnect is now available across Mac OS, iOS and Android platforms.
Five more global exchanges: crypto.com, bitvavo, Kucoin, WazirX, Revolut
The fast expansion of digital asset trading platforms for NKN, enables anyone in the world to buy and sell NKN using their local currency, through bank account or credit card. NKN can now be traded not only against cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, or USDT, but also USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, and many other fiat currencies.
nMobile is the ultimate trusted chat app
Our unique instant messaging app nMobile has also been updated to its latest version 1.2 for both iOS and Android. nMobile has significantly improved in stability and performance during the last months. If you value security and privacy, where no centralized server ever stores your communication records and personal information, please give nMobile a try.
Building great things together
Core sponsor of Gitcoin GR11
Supporting the development of Web 3.0 and it’s developers, designers, technical writers, NKN was proud to be one of the four core sponsors of Gitcoin’s GR 11 hackathon 2021. With a total prize of $100,000 in 11 bounties, we had this great opportunity to meet and work with over 30 ambitious developers and teams that came up with impressive submissions. The winners cover a wide range of topics from online collaboration, decentralized ride sharing, NKN SDK and documentation, and many more.
Web 3.0 Tech Talk 2021: Apps and Devs
NKN cares deeply about our industry and takes the responsibility to further increase the awareness of Web 3.0. Building on the success of our inaugural Web 3.0 Tech Talk from last year, we hosted a sequel titled “Web 3.0 Tech Talk: apps and devs” with a strong speaker lineup consisting of CTOs from leading web 3.0 projects such as Bluzelle, IoTeX, IPFS, NKN, Storj, and Taxa.
Distributed Consensus Research Conference By NKN and Wolfram Research
To further advance fundamental blockchain technology, we co-hosted a research conference with Wolfram Research. We took a deeper dive into distributed consensus and cellular automata, one of the elemental technologies that powered the NKN network. Dr. Stephen Wolfram, Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research and an advisor to NKN, chaired the conference and moderated an impressive list of speakers from both academia and blockchain projects.
Community developers continue to impress
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First NKN Starlink miner for intergalactic connectivity
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NKNx.org 3.0 revamped for even better mining portal
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New NKN network stats dashboard
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nWatch is a new a mobile app for mines
Embracing a global community
During 2021, we expanded our community outreach globally:
- New Japanese twitter account
- New Russian Facebook account
- Founder’s AMA for Korean community
An extraordinary year
Looking back at 2021, we’ve blasted our journey through an extraordinary year, with challenges, and progress, just like everyone of us. But we certainly are proud of many more ups than downs for NKN in 2021.
We came into this year with an ambition to create more, develop more, and achieve more. Coming out of this year with our bountiful harvest, we are moving forward stronger than ever, driven by our commitment to be the New Kind of Network that is built by all, built for all.
It is never enough for us to express our heartfelt gratitude towards all the members of our community, we could never have gotten so far without the support and love from you all. We strongly believe that together we can shape the future of our Internet.
Looking ahead
We are well positioned to capture the next wave in crypto and Web 3.0, and we might have some surprises up our sleeve. Recently we ran a Twitter Poll asking people which defined NKN best.
Actually that was a trick question which dropped some hints about our future plans. It was not about picking one out of three, but rather if all three could be correct. NKN aspires to become the indispensable networking infrastructure for Decentralized Internet, DeFi, and Intergalactic network. In the coming months, we will venture into unknown territories and experiment with new ideas. And we want NKN to be at the front and center of everything web 3.0 and crypto.
So stay tuned for upcoming NKN news and updates! You can follow us on twitter, join our discord, and sign up for our newsletter.