HOPR Data Privacy Testnet to Launch Following Investment by Binance

Swiss data privacy startup HOPR is launching its first public testnet shortly after securing $1 million in investment from investors like Binance.

HOPR said that the startup is preparing to launch the testnet and community support program on July 16.  The event will feature rewards in MakerDAO’s stablecoin Dai (DAI).

Token sale date undisclosed

The HOPR project was launched in response to increasing concerns over online data privacy. The Swiss company develops open-source tools for the Web 3 ecosystem and offers a new blockchain protocol for protecting user data.

Founded earlier this year, HOPR came under the spotlight of the crypto community last week as Binance’s venture arm, Binance Labs, led a $1 million investment in the project. Announcing the news on July 9, Binance called HOPR the “first-ever open incentivized privacy and data protection platform.” A HOPR token sale will follow but the date is not yet known.

Sebastian Bürgel, a co-founder of HOPR, told Cointelegraph that the project is planning a mainnet release later in 2020. According to Bürgel, the Binance investment triggered substantial interest in its product. “Our waitlist exceeded 400 people, which was way over our early expectations,” he noted.

Rewards for running privacy nodes for Web 3

The privacy-focused network allows users to run HOPR nodes, stake and get rewards with HOPR tokens while providing privacy for Web 3. It relies on a global distributed network of mix nodes, providing a layer-0 privacy foundation for new blockchains and Web 3 blockchains, Bürgel explained:

“HOPR is not running a dedicated blockchain. Instead, HOPR can be used as layer-0 privacy foundation on top of which blockchains or other web and web 3 applications and services can be built. HOPR is the first open and incentivized mixnet in which anyone can run a node to provide privacy for others and earn tokens for doing so.”

As concerns over digital privacy have been escalating in recent years, the crypto community is actively building solutions to protect user privacy online. The demand for online privacy tools is also growing with the crypto-powered browser Brave recording massive growth in adoption this year. Earlier in July, Tim Draper-backed startup Unstoppable Domains launched a new decentralized chat protocol.