Exploration of NEM ecosystem
It's often the case that ecosystems are more important than technical product specs so here it is, an exploration of NEM ecosystem in a second part of my research of NEM token.
Part 1: NEM consensus algorithm and blockchain features.
Historical evolution
- NEM was born in January 2014. The project was announced on the Bitcointalk.org forum by the utopianfuture (he is still unknown), who wanted to do a fork of NXT.
- On May 30, 2014 the NEM stakes was put onto the NXT exchange. Initially, 1 NEM stake represented 1 million NEM coins.
- On June 5, 2014 a first project roadmap was published. It was presented by NEM lead developer Jaguar0625.
- On June 13, 2014, utopianfuture vanished from NEM ecosystem. Some of the details of utopianfuture leaving NEM were described in this medium post (bias and objectivity levels unknown).
- NEM alpha version was released on June 25, 2014, the wallet was released on July 17.
- Beta production version was released in October 2014.
- First stable release version appeared on March 31, 2015.
Partnerships
NEM has strong connections with Dragonfly Fintech and Tech Bureau. Both companies intergrated NEM software in their products. NEM developers and Mijin developers are mostly the same people.
Mijin is a private blockchain solution that uses NEM software. It was tested by many Asia institutions, especially by Japan's largest trust bank, SBI Sumishin Net Bank.
Tech Bureau is the crypto-fintech company, which develops software and services based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency technology. Also, as a founding member of “BCCC”, Japan’s largest blockchain business organization, it is also currently working on popularization of blockchain technology. Tech Bureau developed Mijin using NEM technology. Tech Bureau also runs Zaif, a cryptocurrency exchange, Zaif (http://zaif.jp).
To put things better into perspective, the focus of the partnership is to develop a blockchain engine, codenamed as Catapult, which is meant to be an augmented and newly amended version of the Mijin platform.Source: The Merkle
Dragonfly is a blockchain platform solution provider for a large part of the financial ecosystem, including for payment, clearing, and settlement sector. The founder and CEO is Lon Wong. Lon Wong also is a member of NEM core team and a president of NEM.io Foundation.
"We have been ahead of the pack and painstakingly designed this solution for the last three years. With a proven solution, we are able to demonstrate a world’s first in setting the standards right, i.e., establish one’s autonomous private chain and then integrate with the larger, massive network of financial institutions, transacting potentially hundreds of thousands of Tx/s at the system level, all on the blockchain while maintaining independence. This remittance service is only one part of a spectrum of solutions Dragonfly is providing, which includes enabling a country to issue its own sovereign digital money", - Dragonfly Fintech CEO Lon Wong
NEM.io Foundation Ltd
NEM foundation was announced on July 2, 2016.
NEM’s legal entity shall be a not-for-profit entity and should be free from political tussles. That is ideal, but NEM shall also need to be sustainable in the long run.
Source: NEM Blog
The primary declared purposes of the organization are to promote NEM and build partnerships.
On March 5, 2017 there was a first Annual General Meeting of the foundation with Lon Wong as a president of the foundation.
The Malaysian NEM Association
The Malaysian NEM Association is a non-profit society that is registered with the Malaysian Registry of Societies (“ROS”). Its declared aim is to promote blockchain and NEM in Malaysia. The organization collaborates with different youth and educational institutions, governments organization.
The Malaysian NEM Association was started in late 2016, and since then, a lot happened. We're not 100% satisfied in which with the speed things are moving, but I guess that's natural in our field. Well, and we're learning how to run as an association as we are going.
Source: NEM Association (Malaysia) Blog
Media
NEM subreddit exhibits a moderate amount of activity and a significant increase of new users during several last months.
The all time top post on the NEM subreddit is Is NEM REALLY the sleeping giant? by Steem author @vincent4384.
Ecosystem nodes
Supernodes
The NEM Supernode's program is a incentive program to encourage people to support NEM network. It was established on June, 1, 2016.
This program is funded with XEM (NEM tokens) set aside during the Nemesis(Genesis) block. This rewards are given to the high perfomance nodes that provide support for light wallets, mobile wallets and 3rd party apps. To become a Supernode a node must pass a number of tests and show an acceptable level of perfomance for the following metrics: bandwidth, chain height, chain parts, computing power, version, ping, responsiveness.
The NEM Supernode's program is funded with more than 21 million XEM (set aside in the Supernode's Fund11 and explained in the NEM Development Contract), the daily reward was set at 70,000 XEM. This payment is divided among the all participating Supernodes.
Nemnodes
Visit https://nemnodes.org/ for mode data on NEM nodes.
Top region of node locations is Japan (not surprisingly).
At the moment of this post, aroung 600 nodes were online.
The amount of active nodes is growing steadily.
Mobile apps
Markets
XEM is traded on the following markets:
Steem posts about NEM
- I love NEM/XEM (look what we found today) by @bguerrero1986
- Why NEM is one of the best cryptocurrency on the scene? Much better than BTC and ETH! by @arvydas
- Nem is going trough the ROOF !! by @cannabissativa
- NEM is Ethereum on steroids! by @xdark22
- Nem is looking for Bloggers / Bounty List by @vapekings14
Why is NEM better than NXT? Any advantages in tech?
I'm not sure NEM is strictly better or worse. They're different. NEM uses an innovative Proof-of-Importance consensus algorithm, I've published a post about PoI and blockchain features .
NEM seems to have the most complete and useful technology stack built right into its wallet.
It has a notary service that's very robust (https://blog.nem.io/apostille/), an ability to buy XEM through Changelly (although the rates are horrible), a messaging service to accompany each transaction, low transaction fee, namespaces to assign labels to addresses, smart contracts, and a multi-signature and multi-user account.
It's very exciting stuff and I encourage you to look deeper into it.
I think this one has the most potential for going mainstream in Japan
Yep, NEM's strong local focus is a source of a sustainable competitive advantage
Thanks for letting us know about NEM eco-system.
NEM is very interesting. But their faucet sucks big time. I have a long term plan of staking it if it is possible without breaking the bank.
The current harvesting (staking) threshold is 10,000 vested XEM
I know. And at the moment i'm at 31. I have to trade my ass off to get to 10 000. But i have a plan.
Thanks for sharing..educative👍
You're welcome :)
as a cryptocurrency, what NEM would make difference compared to others . What is so strong about NEM for you?
Can you explain POI (proof of importance) in detail. Thx in advance!
Have a look at my previous post :)
POS or POI it always gives me a second thought . I dont know, rewarding the rich is not what it has to be , yes i know those systems and I know there are some sensible points for them . But still a well tought system actually rewards the poor is a real expansion to realworld economy if you ask me. Not the opposite.
It's not about the reward. It's more about making sure the system that's the foundation of all tech on top of it is robust and that no angry/jealous troll can come in and break it.
That's why we have POW and POS. POW is great, but it's too wasteful and not sustainable. POS is also great because it makes sure that the people making sure our system works has an incentive to do so because they have a large stake in the system.
With NEM's POS derivative called POI, it takes that one step further. It adds in the extra layer of not only having a vested amount in the system, but you also have to be an active user of the system by having a good amount of transactions accredited to your name. By doing this, you can just have some rich guy who comes in and lays down a ton of money and he just collects the fees into perpetuity. The staker actually has to be actively using the network as well and I think this extra layer makes it very interesting as it promotes healthy activity.
Really excellent research!
I began to delegated harvest yesterday. Let's see how it goes.
Do you mind revealing how much you're earning and staking? I'm getting close to 10,000 NEM and I'd love to do it too.
Very informative article, thank you! Following!
Nice!!!
thanks! :D
just bought .1 btc worth !
Hey, @alexross, I'm not really sure it's the best time to buy NEM at this moment.
Can someone show me how to retrieve my private key back from my deleted android app wallet? I'm willing to pay.