New year, new leadership, new strategy.

That is the message we received yesterday, as part of the international NEM community, from newly elected NEM Foundation President Alex Tinsman in a widely shared post on the NEM.io forum. Her refreshing candor was greeted with a series of less-than-glowing articles like this one from Coindesk.

Alex Tinsman, President of NEM Foundation

Like the crypto community’s reaction to the announcement of mass layoffs at Steemit Inc a few weeks before Christmas, we at DarcMatter believe that the industry reaction to these actions may be over exaggerated. Any new enterprise, especially those that tread down the far path of innovation, requires decisive action to proceed to the next stage of growth. All enterprises must prioritize liquidity and the use of this liquidity in creating ROI for all stakeholders, blockchain or otherwise.

As we said in our last blockchain update, in a bear market, the best course of action is often just to huddle up and focus on tech development. As excited as we are about the release of NEM’s next-generation Catapult technology on the NEM public blockchain later this year, we were especially glad to hear that the new Foundation leadership’s suggested transition “from a promotional-focused organization to a product-focused organization” should actually speed up their expected date for Catapult integration. As was related in another must-read post the NEM Foundation released as a specific response to the inflammatory Coindesk article, now the “NEM Foundation has a focus on the launch of Catapult.”

It goes without saying, the DarcMatter family is an avid proponent of blockchain technology and its decentralization aspects. However, it is important to note that centralization/decentralization is not a binary state. It needs to be observed on a continuous scale of 0 to 1. The concept of running the NEM Foundation as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was a valiant attempt. However, we are likely starting to see the immediate realities of vision in action, which will require continuous learnings and revisions going forward.

It is important to note that the the underlying technology and ecosystem is so much more than just the NEM Foundation. To support this point, one only need to observe the success of NEM Europe, an organization that is independent of the NEM Foundation, as well as the impending launch of NEM Ventures, a VC arm funded from XEM tokens in the NEM genesis block that will be held accountable to accepted investment banking standards. Other organizations that are heavily involved with NEM technology are ProximaX, which had this to say about the report, and mijin, which develops and supports private blockchains based on NEM.

The technology and blockchain ecosystem, as evidenced by the more than 400 active supernodes, representing a commitment of nearly 1.25 billion XEM tokens staked in the ecosystem, currently operating on the NEM mainnet to secure the blockchain demonstrates a standalone resilience. However, we do want to ensure our stakeholders that no matter what the outcome, we are ready.

In short, DarcMatter is very impressed with new NEM Foundation president Alex Tinsman’s bold decision to revamp the organization she was fairly elected to lead. We offer our support and reiterate our confidence in the NEM technology that we have chosen to build on. We think that NEM, via its institutional-grade Catapult platform as well as its participation in forward-thinking fintech groups such as the Verified Token Framework, is well-positioned to succeed in a crypto future where security tokens comprise the vast majority of assets in the industry.

We are readying ourselves for that future. Stay tuned for more important updates throughout 2019!

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