NuCypher is a decentralized key management system and proxy re-encryption service. The decentralized key management system lets users securely store information on the NuCypher blockchain network with full encryption and complete access controls. NuCypher works with other blockchains by adding a privacy layer to existing blockchain developments.

NU was first sold in a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) sale ahead of the public testnet launch in October 2019, in which 8% of the token supply was purchased for a total of $133 million. Token holders from the SAFT sale were required to lock their tokens for two years while NuCypher moved towards a full mainnet, or live blockchain, launch.

At the launch of the mainnet, there was a total supply of 1 billion NU, with 39% of the supply delegated to early investors and another 8% for the SAFT investors.

In June 2021, the NU price spiked on the news it was being listed on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. The token reached an all-time high on Oct. 15, 2021, of $1.59, jumping roughly 440% ahead of updates about its upcoming merger with Keep. The NU price all-time low was $0.0611 on Nov. 27, 2020.

NU is an inflationary token with a capped supply, but the inflation rate is not fixed. Users who hold the tokens for longer periods of time are given a higher staking reward. If all users were to stake their supply of tokens for a month, the inflation rate of NU would be 50% a year, on average. If all users committed to staking their tokens for a full year, the inflation rate would jump to 100% per year.

Mikhail Egorov and MacLane Wilkison co-founded NuCypher in 2015 as a way to secure data stored in the cloud. As they continued to work on the project, the duo were accepted to Y Combinator in 2016, where they secured $750,000 in a funding round. Egorov also founded Curve, the popular decentralized market maker for stablecoins.

In June 2017, the NuCypher white paper was released by the co-founders, bringing smart contract functionality to their cloud data storage solution. Following the white paper, Egorov and Wilkison released a private testnet in 2018, followed by a public testnet in October 2019.

When the project transitioned to the blockchain, NuCypher decided to adopt NU, the native currency of the network.

NuCypher and Keep are finalizing the merger into the Threshold Network. The project has been given the codename KEaNU from community members to track its progress. Once completed, the Threshold Network will provide several threshold cryptography primitives for NuCypher and Keep, including proxy re-encryption, threshold signatures, distributed key generation and random beacons.