Background
The New Economy Movement, NEM, was started on the January 19, 2014, by an unknown identity by the name of Utopianfuture on the Bitcointalk.org forums. Initially Utopianfuture intended to create a fork of NXT. He realized that NXT had a bad distribution model and set out to have a fair and egalitarian distribution for NEM.
“NEM is the first crypto-coin that no wealthy person or early adopters can obtain a significant percentage of by using money to buy-in or by using a huge mining rig. That to me symbolizes a great sense of fairness and egalitarianism.” [sic]
Utopianfuture managed to assemble an outstanding team of developers to realize this project and it wasn’t long until the team realized that they didn’t have to settle for a fork. They realized that NXT had more problems than just the initial distribution and that they had a golden opportunity to create something better something that could be the next big thing. The goal had changed from a mere fork to even transcending being just another cryptocurrency; it was now a movement for global financial change — a movement that would try to establish a new global economy not just for the crypto scene, but for everyone.
Since then, more developers have joined the fray and today it boasts of more than a dozen volunteers working on making this project a success. NEM has a total of about 3000 stakeholders, most of whom will hopefully support the movement after launch and propel it to new heights.
As mysterious as he appeared, Utopianfuture departed, as if he were a fata morgana. On June 13, 2014, he stepped down abruptly as a result of being accused and, subsequently, admitting to having multiple accounts for claiming NEM stakes. But many suspect this was intentional so that he had an excuse to step away and disappear for whatever reasons, known only to him.
He has since renounced any association with NEM and handed all responsibilities to the remaining core team members to take over. The entire team was taken aback, but because NEM was already a somewhat decentralized movement that was resistant to change, there was little hiccup. More volunteers stepped forward to work on the project and NEM was stronger than before. The core team, despite their intense involvement in the development of the technology, regrouped and organised a marketing and promotion arm to continue promoting the movement.
The major events which have taken place since the inception of NEM are summarized as follows:
NEM as a Crypto Ecosystem
The advent of Bitcoin marked the beginning of a Crypto Economy. The core technology of Bitcoin was the creation of a method for consensus agreement of transactions. Upon confirmation of transactions, they are put onto a public ledger, whereby this ledger is guarded by entities that work on the basis of each mutually distrusting one another. Hence it is in the interest of every entity concerned that these transactions are valid. These public ledgers are known as blockchains and the use of cryptography is fundamental to the integrity of a blockchain.
Following the introduction of Bitcoin, many things have happened. Unlike Bitcoin, NEM is not a coin. NEM is a movement that will build an entire ecosystem fuelled by NEM (New Economy Money in this context). Initiatives like NEM are now touted to be Crypto 2.0/2.5. As an ecosystem, NEM offers much more than what a cryptocoin can do as a medium of exchange. It also lends itself as a fuel for the entire ecosystem to work. Within the ecosystem, many things can be built, including e-commerce, secure and encrypted messaging, applications, social networking, social media, digital asset management, an exchange platform, and customized or application-specific implementations requiring a secure public ledger management solution.
Hence NEM is a secure platform where real-life applications can be built upon reliably.
Some of the great features of the NEM ecosystem include:
• A blockchain synchronization solution based on Proof-of-Importance (POI).
• POI gives rise to a more evenly distributed harvesting (mining) method. One doesn’t need to have the biggest machine, nor have the most stakes in order to earn the most reward. One only needs to prove one’s importance to the overall economy in order to harvest blocks.
• No legacy problems associated with “old” blockchain technology.
• Eigentrust++ used to protect the P2P network.
• Developed from scratch in Java, a known and proven software platform, and therefore widely supported.
• No specialized mining hardware required, thus saving electricity and helping to create a sustainable future. It can even run on a Raspberry Pi.
• Fast blockchain time of about 1 minute.
• One-click simple install client; web-browser based for portability.
• Secure and encrypted P2P messaging.
• Dovetails seamlessly into a fast trading exchange and integrates between real-world financial systems (equities, forex, derivatives, etc.) and the ecosystem.
• Ecosystem is designed in such a way that it can create encapsulated — fungible colored coins — crypto coins (e.g. BTC) and allow users to carry out transactions within the ecosystem using these encapsulated crypto coins.
• Allows for rule-based accounts, giving it a highly flexible and configurable approach to managing contracts, ledgers, equities, dividends, forex, etc.
• A suite of mobile apps are being designed to make it easy to transact and carry out mainstream usage.
• Nodes are not limited in number and therefore, like the Bitcoin network, can grow to a fairly large size with time.
• Broad base coin distribution–-one of the largest — allows for even distribution at the start.
• Colored coins and P2P asset exchange.
• Asset naming convention has name registry-like features.
• Uses for financial market, logistics, asset tracking, and a host of other real-world applications.
• User wallet can be programmed for application-specific solutions to be used internally by any entity for their specific uses using the NEM ecosystem and infrastructure.
Thanks to our development team’s innovations such as Proof-of-Importance (which will replace Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Work) and the use of the Eigentrust++ algorithm, NEM currently has state of the art technology that is shared by no other cryptocurrency. Besides these new innovations, NEM has a strong community of more than 3000 members, and is growing. With the community’s help, we have organized everything from social media and PR campaigns to funding and execution of ecosystem projects. Thanks to the hard work of our community members, NEM is poised to become a strong ecosystem to reckon with in 2014.
NEM, the future of Crypto-economy
NEM is not just another cryptocurrency. It is a movement. We believe that by providing the most innovative and secure cryptocurrency platform, we can change the world. Imagine the possibility of every person in the world to be able to trade with each other without a middleman, simply by relying on a trust-less platform. And all this happens virtually in real-time.
NEM is written from scratch using Java 8. As a blockchain technology, it does not have legacy problems that other Altcoins have (e.g., waste of energy for mining and mining pools centralizing power), as most of these Altcoins are modified copies from previous blockchain models. Further, Java as a proven software development platform, is well supported and therefore will not be short of programmers to make the NEM ecosystem sustainable as a long term solution.
Leveraging the enhanced and optimised blockchain design is the actual ecosystem capability of NEM. NEM is designed with expandability and integration in mind. As an example, a hybrid fast-trading exchange can be integrated into the NEM ecosystem, which will allow easy real-life interaction with financial instruments such as equities, forex, and derivatives. Its powerful and secure encrypted messaging system allows for a plethora of applications that can utilize messaging to make transactions of all kinds, not just sending messages, per se. Further, its ability to have colored coins within the ecosystem allows for fiat currency integration, and therefore allows for fiat-related transactions to exist within the ecosystem. The NEM ecosystem also offers rule-based solutions so that smart contracts can be created and triggered by events, which results in a series of actions defined by these rules. The NEM ecosystem is therefore a very powerful platform for a myriad of uses. It is not merely a coin or just a medium of exchange.
NEM has a revolutionary Proof-of-Importance harvesting (equivalent of mining in a POW system) mechanism that solves Bitcoin’s biggest problems: the huge amount of wasted energy and the mining equipment arms race. In the NEM network, users will be rewarded through a careful balance of multiple factors that determines one’s importance to the NEM economy. With POI it’s not enough to be rich to become important. It matters how much you transact and with whom you transact. It’s actually hard to explain POI without getting into mathematical details, but an easy way of putting it is POI is POS with additional factors that will break the “rich get richer” cycle that all pure-POS systems are suffering from.
The Eigentrust++ algorithm guarantees the safety of the P2P network, by assigning a credibility rating to each node. If a Node misbehaves, the network will detect this and will exclude it from the network. Most other systems use mere rule-based blacklisting, whereas Eigentrust++ provides an adaptive heuristic approach.
As we unveil this futuristic and advanced platform, NEM will certainly gain widespread and wide-scale adoption. No platform can be exploited fully unless there is a proper interface. Therefore, as a priority, much thought and consideration have been put into making NEM a very user friendly solution. The roadmap for future user interface design and iterations will include a very user-friendly GUI wallet, both for mobile and desktop systems, that come with an asset exchange. We have given this a lot of thought and we are certain this will come into fruition.
Beyond technology
NEM not only boasts of superior technology, but what is more important, it has an equal community for all its members. NEM began with an equal distribution among about 3000 interested parties. Initially, one could join NEM by sending a small nominal fee or by doing some promotional work for NEM, such as writing an article regarding NEM on the internet to earn some NEM Coins. So, having money was not the only way to be a part of NEM. Now, that’s real equality of opportunity!
The chance to participate has not ended with the distribution of the stakes. Every Nemster can participate in developing NEM in their areas of expertise. So if one is a developer, one can contribute to the development of the NEM code. If one is a marketer/graphic designer, one can do things related to that field. If one is an entrepreneur, one can help with organizational tasks. And if one doesn’t know where to begin, one can start by participating in our swarms. There is always a place for anyone to participate.
So far, NEM’s community members have enthusiastically taken up the task of carrying out the message of hope for a new economy and building NEM. But there’s always room for more. If you think you’d be up for the challenge of changing the world, we would like to invite YOU to take the journey with us!
