NEM (XEM)

What Is NEM [XEM]?

NEM (New Economy Movement) is an ecosystem of platforms that use blockchain and cryptography to provide solutions for businesses and individuals. XEM is the native cryptocurrency of NEM’s NIS1 public blockchain.

NIS1 operates in a similar way to Bitcoin (BTC): it has a network of distributed independent nodes that process and record transactions on a public ledger called “blockchain.” These nodes are incentivized to contribute their time and computing resources and remain incorruptible via transaction fee rewards; these rewards are paid out in XEM coins to each node that manages to add a new block of transactions to the end of the blockchain.

However, NIS1’s blockchain has a number of unique features that set it apart from Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies.

The alpha version of NIS1 — or NEM as it was known at that time — was launched on June 25, 2014, and its mainnet went live on March 31, 2015.

Who Are the Founders of NEM?

NEM was originally created by three developers known by their pseudonyms on the Bitcointalk.org forum: Jaguar0625, BloodyRookie and gimre. Since its inception in 2014-2015, NEM has grown from a personal project of three programmers to a large ecosystem composed of several platforms.

NEM’s overall development and promotion is now managed by the NEM Foundation, registered in Singapore. The Foundation’s founding members are Erik Van Himbergen, Jeff McDonald, Lon Wong and Leon Yeoh.

Erik Van Himbergen is an entrepreneur from Belgium. He studied business economics at the KU Leuven university, accountancy and corporate finance at the EHSAL Management School and software engineering at the University of Antwerp. Besides co-founding the NEM Foundation — which he left in April 2020 — Van Himbergen founded the Manitpro BV IT consultancy and services firm.

Jeff McDonald received his degrees in psychology and religious studies at the Oklahoma State University and the University of Kansas respectively. McDonald has been working on NEM as part of its core team since before the project’s launch. Prior to joining NEM, he worked as an assistant professor at the Keimyung University in South Korea.

Lon Wong, an Australian entrepreneur, has received his education in electrical engineering at the University of New South Wales. After leaving the NEM Foundation in April 2018, Wong has been heading two companies that he himself co-founded: blockchain platform service Dragonfly Fintech and blockchain infrastructure development platform ProximaX.

What Makes NEM Unique?

XEM is a decentralized open-source cryptocurrency that has a number of unique features.

Perhaps the most important of these is the way the NIS1 blockchain is secured. NIS1 uses its own proof-of-importance (PoI) algorithm — as opposed to the far more widespread proof-of-work and proof-of-stake — for the purpose of ensuring that transactions on the network are processed and recorded in a timely and honest manner.

Proof-of-importance allows anyone to run a node on the NIS1 network and facilitate transactions via a process called “delegated harvesting.” The system takes into account every node’s amount of already held coins, how often they transact on the network and who they transact with, in order to approximate their “importance score” in NEM’s economy. Based on this score, the nodes then receive a share of the fees from the transactions they have helped to process.

NEM claims that the proof-of-importance system ensures that the network can identify and reward those that actually use it the most.

In addition to its unique PoI algorithm, NIS1 also supports such features as multisignature account contracts, encrypted messaging, the Eigentrust++ reputation system and the Apostille service for notarizing and checking the authenticity of files on blockchain.

Another important market for NIS1 are enterprise-level solutions: through a purpose-built API system, NEM allows developers to integrate its blockchain infrastructure into third-party applications.

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How Many NEM [XEM] Coins Are There in Circulation?

The total supply of XEM is 8.999 billion coins, all of which were created since the launch of the network — no new XEM can be mined. The network nodes are incentivized to process transactions via the distribution of fees on the transactions that are included in each new block.

How Is the NEM Network Secured?

To secure its network, NEM uses Ed25519 public-key signature system and the SHA3 hash algorithm.

Where Can You Buy NEM [XEM]?

XEM trading pairs are available on a number of major cryptocurrency exchanges, such as:

• Zaif
• Binance
• OKEx
• HitBTC