Nillion operates as a decentralized network designed for Encrypted Markets. Rather than broadcasting an instruction prior to execution, a user binds it to a specific condition and posts it onchain. It remains unreadable to other traders, agents, and the network itself until that condition is satisfied. Once met, a threshold of independent nodes unlocks the instruction, triggering automatic execution. This privacy is enabled by Covenants, a primitive that shields the order, strategy, and underlying logic—elements that have traditionally operated in the open.

NIL serves as the native utility token for the network, utilized for:

• Paying protocol fees to create and resolve Covenants
• Staking to run a node and secure the network
• Distributing rewards to nodes that monitor conditions and settle results

Covenants act as the protocol driving Encrypted Markets through:

• Instructions sealed onchain that are gated by conditions, only revealing and executing when live data feeds satisfy those conditions

Additionally, NIL provides access to Nillion’s existing privacy infrastructure:

• nilDB: an encrypted database that splits data across multiple nodes, allowing calculations to be performed while the data remains encrypted
• nilAI: privacy technologies focused on AI, such as the AI Virtual Machine (AIVM), nada-AI, and nilTEE