Nimiq: Past, Present & Future
Blog Series — Marketing
Following the “Exchange Listings” post in our blog series, this update offers insight into measures we are working on in order to grow the Nimiq community and overall visibility, as well as reaching out to new technical and non-technical people alike.
Marketing Efforts
With the Mainnet launch behind us and most of the initial technical aftermath addressed, we are expanding our efforts to include a number of targeted marketing engagements. The exchange listings are an obvious part of this effort, requiring substantial resources both time-wise as well as from a financial point of view. Beyond exchange listings, we are focusing on the following tasks:
- Nimiq Web Shop: get Nimiq swag for NIM with a NIM-based checkout system. The first online shop showcase for the Nimiq Ecosystem!
- Nimiq and Ledger: Ledger app and branded Ledger Nano S promotion
- Content Marketing: broadened content on multiple channels
- Nimiq Safe Usability: focus on onboarding and social features
- Nimiq Outreach: research communities and conferences
These measures are meant to provide sustainable growth over hype. We plan on considering larger scale and more classic means of marketing in sync with advances in network performance — the topic up for discussion in the next post in this series.
Nimiq Web Shop
We are building a Nimiq Web Shop! An online store to buy cool Nimiq swag with NIM! The goal is to use Nimiq for what it was designed for: a web-based payment protocol; and at the same time allowing existing and new supporters to display their love for Nimiq. The idea is to start with a basic selection of high-quality NIMIQ branded items: t-shirts, hoodies and baseball caps. And also giving away Nimiq hexagon logo stickers with every order to help spreading brand awareness. The Nimiq Web Shop will employ a fully Nimiq-based checkout process which we plan to generalize and release as Open Source in the future so that other web shops can integrate it smoothly.
Nimiq and Ledger
We have great news that Ledger internally confirmed the approval of the Nimiq Ledger App! While we must wait for the official announcement and release [Update: now officially announced on Twitter!], we are prospecting the first batch & version of a Nimiq-branded Ledger Nano S promotion addressing users that share their excitement for Nimiq with new community members.
Our goal is to find a way to introduce as many new users to NIM and Nimiq as possible — technical as well as not-so-technical. We welcome suggestions in our Telegram!
Content Marketing
As part of evolving our media content strategy, we plan on producing VLogs on a broader, more inclusive range of topics, such as
- Crypto news & education
- Q&A’s: Team Nimiq answering community questions
- Projects in the Nimiq Lab: hardware hacking & research
- Nimiq events: hackathons, conferences, and talks (see below)
- Updates on Nimiq technology
- Development of the Nimiq Nerd Campus
With the success of simple applications like Nimipet we also look to sponsor Crypto-educational web games that have the potential to draw a wider range of new participants into the Nimiq Ecosystem.
Nimiq Safe
As effective steps towards increasing usability as well as the user reach, we are working on making the Safe’s onboarding process easier and adding “social payment” features such as support for contact lists.
Research and Conferences
Connecting with experienced researchers, market analysts and competent blockchain developers in the cryptosphere is an important part of any growth and recognition strategy in this space. Winning more Nimiq advocates by convincing with facts has the potential to lead to sustainable growth while at the same time providing valuable insights, feedback, and pointers for improvement. This effort includes activities such as:
- Representing Nimiq at reputable conferences, for instance Malta Blockchain Summit and Consensus: Invest 2018.
- Organizing a university hackathon in Costa Rica.
- Organizing our own first smaller conference.
University Hackathon
Tying into our vision of a future Nimiq Nerd Campus, we are planning on providing events to actually bring in more such ‘nerds’. We are starting by reaching out locally to a select number of makers, hackers, university professors and visionaries to attract new talent for a hackathon. Some of the most notable institutions that we are in touch with are the two major Universities in Costa Rica: Universidad de Costa Rica and Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Additionally, Fundación Costa Rica para la Innovación and last but not least a HackerSpace group from San José called “JáquerEspeis”.
Our plan is to implement a somewhat recurring theme of hackathons. In this first one we are aiming at testing our methodologies and generally “build cool stuff” related to Nimiq, Web Assembly, IoT, cold storage and the likes. We hope to generate considerable media content from such events to draw additional technically-oriented users to Nimiq, thus growing our community with fresh talent in various directions.
Follow Nimiq on Twitter, Discord and Telegram to be notified about updates on the Ledger app, promotions, the web shop, and conferences. The next planned post in this series will cover network performance.
DISCLAIMER: None of the statements must be viewed as an endorsement or recommendation for Nimiq, any cryptocurrency, or investment product. Neither the information, nor any opinion contained herein constitutes a solicitation or offer by the creators or participants to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments or provide any investment advice or service.
