Sealed bids have an old rule: the envelope is opened only when bidding closes. But anyone in the industry knows that the most powerful person in the whole process isn’t the bidder—it’s the person opening the envelope. They can open it early, open it late, or read it before making a decision. All you can do is trust them.
For decades, traditional finance has tried to constrain this person: notarization, witnesses, dual review, post-event audits. Put simply, it sends more people to keep an eye on one person.
@Nillion ’s Covenants offers a different answer: get rid of the person opening the envelope altogether. Once a directive is sealed, its contents are split into many pieces and distributed among nodes. The pieces are released only when the conditions are met; whoever gathers enough pieces can open it, and the revealed contents must match the on-chain commitment. “Opening the envelope” goes from being someone’s job to a set of rules anyone can verify. Nillion’s Dusk phase is now live on Ethereum mainnet. Sealed bids and payments released at a set time are among the first things it can do.
But old hands inspecting a product tend to ask three questions first.
First, who decides whether the conditions have been met? Right now, only price or time is supported, which is a good thing—it’s simple enough. But I’ll be watching closely to see where the “price” itself comes from and who confirms it.
Second, who takes the place of the person opening the envelope? The committee is public, and in theory, k nodes could collude to open it early. How decentralized the system is depends on what the node network actually becomes, not on the slogans.
Third, who pays? If creating and settling transactions keep generating fees, $NIL has solid demand behind it. If the system relies on subsidies over the long term, staking rewards could dilute passive holders faster than fees can offset them.
I can’t give any of these three questions full marks right now, and I don’t think I should. Nillion’s Dusk phase is just the first of seven eras, with more releases due before the end of the year. My attitude is old-fashioned: look at the data first, then draw conclusions.
#NIL
For decades, traditional finance has tried to constrain this person: notarization, witnesses, dual review, post-event audits. Put simply, it sends more people to keep an eye on one person.
@Nillion ’s Covenants offers a different answer: get rid of the person opening the envelope altogether. Once a directive is sealed, its contents are split into many pieces and distributed among nodes. The pieces are released only when the conditions are met; whoever gathers enough pieces can open it, and the revealed contents must match the on-chain commitment. “Opening the envelope” goes from being someone’s job to a set of rules anyone can verify. Nillion’s Dusk phase is now live on Ethereum mainnet. Sealed bids and payments released at a set time are among the first things it can do.
But old hands inspecting a product tend to ask three questions first.
First, who decides whether the conditions have been met? Right now, only price or time is supported, which is a good thing—it’s simple enough. But I’ll be watching closely to see where the “price” itself comes from and who confirms it.
Second, who takes the place of the person opening the envelope? The committee is public, and in theory, k nodes could collude to open it early. How decentralized the system is depends on what the node network actually becomes, not on the slogans.
Third, who pays? If creating and settling transactions keep generating fees, $NIL has solid demand behind it. If the system relies on subsidies over the long term, staking rewards could dilute passive holders faster than fees can offset them.
I can’t give any of these three questions full marks right now, and I don’t think I should. Nillion’s Dusk phase is just the first of seven eras, with more releases due before the end of the year. My attitude is old-fashioned: look at the data first, then draw conclusions.
#NIL