NEM Newsletter #9

We have come far

The original announcement of NEM was posted on Bitcointalk just over one year ago. Since then, we have come a very long way and reached many milestones. Over the last year we have seen many ups and downs, controversies, excitement, and frustration, but above all (and most importantly), we have a restored hope that our new blockchain technology can make a difference to a world badly in need of a new economic system.

This time last year, there was no software released, there was no such thing as “NEMStake,” there wasn’t even a complete stakeholder list. One year later we have a beta client that has handled over 2.2 million transactions with ease in only the short period of a few months, a battery of testing by the core devs and the community, all of which has battle-hardened the core software in preparation for launch. On top of this, the highly skilled core devs have developed arguably the most advanced crypto-platform technology to date.

Final redemption deadline

The final redemption deadline for Nxt AE NEMstake holders is now the 26th of February. If one does not redeem one’s NEMstake by this date, it will no longer be redeemable for real XEM and will become completely worthless. You can find information on how to redeem your NEMstake here: https://forum.nemcoin.com/nem-news-alerts/updated-redemption-guide

A few have raised concern about us not being able to announce a firm date for launch. Our answer to that is, we can only be certain of the date if everyone is certain that the multisig is well tested and all the bugs are ironed out. Once that is certain, a launch date can be determined. After all, nothing is certain except for death and taxes. Having said that, we can only give an estimated date that the launch should happen within the next two months. But this is by no means final. What we can say with certainty is that we are most definitely getting much closer and with surety, we can say that we will have an advanced, stable and secure platform at launch. Naturally this will be of immense benefit and importance to all NEMsters, which has been our priority all along.

Proof-of-Importance Competition Results

The competition has recently come to a close and we would first like to thank all of those who participated. The winners of the competition are tolstoy, jkoil, and Hollowman338, in that order. Congratulations! The Proof-of-Importance competition was a great way to help test the network as it increased the number of transactions on the network by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of transactions.

It did not just display how accounts can differ in importance, but also displayed how important the members of the community can be to make sure that PoI is well tested. The winner of the competition, tolstoy, gracefully and unselfishly made the admirable decision to donate his prize award of 0.6 NS (NEM stake) to Altnemo. As tolstoy said in his own words, “I believe in the long-term success of NEM. A small share in AltNemo may one day be more valuable than even the 0.6 stake. An egalitarian way that may benefit all NEMsters is to give the NS to AltNemo to help with it’s [sic] incorporation.” More information about AltNemo’s initiative can be found at http://www.altnemo.com.

NEM Version 0.5.4

On February 1st, 2015, the long awaited Version 0.5.4 of the beta client was released, which included groundbreaking new features such as the first ever easy-to-use, blockchain-based multisignature implementation, as well as a new experimental anti-spam feature, both of which are so far working very well without any major bugs. In this version, the developers also fixed a large number of bugs from previous versions and included extensive internal improvements to various aspects of the core NEM software. The testing of this new version is ongoing and we encourage all community members to participate in testing so that development can proceed more efficiently and prevent bugs from causing trouble at a later stage.

Security-centric features

Blockchain technology has attracted huge investment, made millionaires, and is starting to revolutionize the financial world. However, security has been a big issue across the board for the core protocols, with huge losses for many individuals and companies alike.

For this reason, the core developers have focused on building the core software from scratch with security always as an absolute priority. As well as many internal security features, users can keep their XEM safe by using innovative features such as multisignature accounts and Remote Harvesting/NIS. We would like to point out in the following sections, some of the benefits of these features that may have been overlooked.

Multisignature accounts

NEM’s multisignature is novel and unique in the cryptocurrency sphere. We have actually taken multisignature one notch higher. It does away with the need to make every signatory sign the transaction directly onto a wallet. Instead it is done on the block chain.

This doesn’t sound like a big deal at first, but if one really takes a closer look at it, the advantages are significant. With other platforms, multisig has always been client- or wallet-based, and had a couple of setbacks. First, each implementation has not been compatible, even if it is of the same crypto currency. Secondly, it requires the wallet carrying the lockbox to be online.

In NEM’s case, multisignature accounts can be created and transactions issued by using the APIs. Secondly, with NEM’s block chain multisig implementation, the NIS nodes handle the signing of a transaction. Hence, once a multsig transaction is created or signed, the user can switch the client wallet offline, making it an almost cold wallet.

Remote (proxy) harvesting and remote NIS

NEM has revolutionized mining in cryptocurrencies. Known as remote harvesting in NEM, this process involves using a proxy address to harvest on the same machine or another machine. How this works is that the original account creates a proxy public address key and uses this public address as the “front” to harvest. Any rewards from it get transparently passed to the real address holding this proxy key. That is the very essence of remote harvesting.

Apart from remote harvesting, NEM’s software architecture allows harvesting without ever needing to have the client wallet (NCC) online. One can use this by making use of a remote NIS to harvest on your behalf, without ever giving the remote NIS access to your private key. No matter where the NIS is in the network and no matter how malicious the NIS can be, one will never need to worry about an NIS stealing XEM from your account.

Development of NCC

We were hopeful when we open-sourced NCC (https://github.com/NewEconomyMovement/NemCommunityClient) that some people would either contribute to it (with help from the dev team) or build their own alternative clients. However, in contrast to NIS, things have moved slowly with the NCC. We hope that more contributors will come forward to help with the development of the NCC and welcome all interested parties to contact a member of the core development team who will provide support where possible.

All is not bad news for the NCC though. Over the last couple of weeks many bugs have been found and subsequently fixed by the core developers, which has resulted in a more functional client with far fewer bugs than in previous versions. Combined with many internal improvements to NIS, as well as new features, it is clear that we are making good progress towards launch with a platform that all Nemsters can be proud of.

What can be expected in the coming weeks

In the coming weeks, we will focus on testing the newly released Beta features vigorously, in order to ensure they are safe enough for use on the live net. It is most important that multisignature is well-tested, as a minor bug could result in a huge loss of funds which would be catastrophic for NEM. We will also focus on fixing as many remaining internal and GUI bugs as reasonably possible.

We will also continue to communicate with exchanges and other interested parties in the run up to launch as well as preparing and finalising our documentation. There will be a large amount of internal work to be completed by both the core developers and the marketing team, so all engines will be at full speed for the coming weeks. We will need the full support of the community so as to get past this final milestone in one piece. We also encourage all NEMsters to come on the forums, social media, and all other places to show support during this final leg of the first part of our epic journey of bringing the New Economy to life.