NKN (NKN), which stands for New Kind of Network, is a project dedicated to building an open-source, decentralized network protocol. It enables public blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to share internet connectivity and bandwidth. The primary goal is to tackle current internet problems, including security risks, scalability limitations, and centralization.

Yanbo Li, Bruce Li, and Yilun Zhang established NKN, bringing with them experience in blockchain technology and networking software. The project counts Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Wolfram|Alpha and Mathematica, and Whitfield Diffie, the inventor of public-key cryptography, among its advisors.

The NKN Mainnet went live in July 2019 and supports as many as 25,000 full consensus nodes. The whitepaper states that the project pursues three primary objectives: decentralizing internet infrastructure, enhancing scalability, and strengthening network security. By leveraging community resources, NKN intends to build an affordable platform for decentralized applications.

Key applications of the network include:

• A Content Delivery system, featuring a partnership with Chinese video provider iQIYI
• Edge computing services, through a contract with China Mobile
• D-chat, a secure messaging application
• nShell, which provides secure remote terminal access

NKN employs a consensus mechanism rooted in Cellular Automata, utilizing a simple local majority rule to achieve system-wide convergence within few iterations. This architecture aims to accommodate any number of equal consensus nodes. For networking, it implements a global addressing system based on public keys to facilitate direct peer-to-peer interactions without central servers. Packet routing relies on the Chord Distributed Hash Table (DHT), assigning each NKN address to a random, verifiable location on the Chord DHT ring.

The NKN network’s native token, NKN, has a capped total supply of 1,000,000,000. Currently, there are 754,831,362 NKN in circulation.

The NKN network relies on a security model known as Proof-of-Relay (PoR), which is also described as “useful Proof-of-Work”. This approach differs from standard proof-of-work (PoW) systems like the one used by Bitcoin, where rewards are tied to solving hash functions. Instead, PoR compensates miners for transmitting actual, useful data across the network.

You can buy NKN on a range of centralized exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, Bittrex, Huobi, Gate.io, Bitget, and Crypto.com, among others.