Introduction to NEM (XEM)

NEM stands for New Economy Movement, and more than being just another coin, it aims to be the coin of the future. To make this happen NEM integrates concepts from Bitcoin – trying to improve it – and other coins, but also academic research.

As stated in the name, it’s a movement to empower individuals, to create a new decentralized economy with financial freedom. The ICO for NEM happened in 2014, and the fair distribution of XEM was a key factor for the NEM blockchain launch.

75% of the distributed coins were evenly given to almost 3000 stakeholders, being the remaining 25% kept for development and marketing expenses. Building a decentralized community was a concern from day one, assuring that the price would be controlled by no one.

The distribution was made with what is called the genesis block, which eliminates the need for mining, being those holding NEM the network nodes that verify transactions, with a Proof of Importance (PoI) mechanism.

NEM’s team believes this PoI mechanism improves the transaction speed, and it will also be a motivator for people with low computing power to join the NEM network. In this sense, they face the competition of Ethereum as they also aim to build dApps on their protocol.

Most coins use Proof of Work or Proof of Stake as a mining method, but NEM’s mining – called Harvesting – is based on PoI, deciding the next block based on the number XEM each account holds.

Egalitarian aspirations regarding the distribution of XEM is something hard to achieve in a free market, so even if this noble goal of a new economy might not be achieved, the focus on a reliable digital future is something the NEM team is working on.

The Eigentrust algorithm is a mechanism to establish trust on the network. If some of the peers are sending false data, Eingentrust simply excludes them from the network, while at the same time creates a trust rating to those peers. NEM is the first crypto to have ever using this network protection algorithm.

The application of this algorithm is not just about trust and safety, but also reduces costs in transactions, and helps data management. The way NEM interacts with the blockchain is through an http API, which not only makes creating applications easier, but also gives the possibility of creating smart contracts off-chain.

These off-chain smart contracts make an appeal for companies to use NEM blockchain, as it gives them more flexibility when, for example, their business model changes, they can also easily change the smart contract.

NEM is an ambitious project that has a different vision from the blockchain, while approaching the same problems and trying to make a stronger ecosystem. The way they have dealt with the recent hack on Coincheck, prohibiting the transaction of those XEM funds by marking them (pretty much like marked cash), tells a lot about their team.

This is a brief introduction to NEM, but if you want to know more about the coin, what people are saying about it, technical details, jump right in any of the links we present below. They are well worth reading before investing!