The Coin Shark keeps on telling about the most popular and successful alternative coins, revealing the history of their development and their key unique features that allowed them to take over the cryptocurrency market. Today we will talk about the NEM project and its cryptocurrency - XEM. These coins are currently among top 14 largest digital currencies by market capitalization and cost around $0.34 per one XEM, according to CoinMarketCap NEM stands for "New Economy Movement". The project was launched in 2015.

NEM key features

This cryptocurrency is developed on the original open source code that has certain innovations. First of all, it is a POI (Proof of Importance) algorithm that provides such a mechanism for selecting users to confirm transactions, that not only the number of owned coins is taken into account, but also the contribution of a particular user to the project. The difference between POI and POS that is used in many other cryptocurrencies, is that the advantage is given to a user who is able to confirm more transactions, even if they have less coins on their account by the time of a transaction than another user. Commission fees differ for each transaction and depend on many factors - the number of XEM on the account of a sender and a recipient, their activity, the security of a particular transaction. The more XEM coins are there in a wallet, the higher commissions are. Such a model was introduced in order to increase the liquidity of the cryptocurrency and stimulate users to pay with coins, instead of storing them in wallets. NEM wallets are easy-to-use and have a fairly high level of security. In order to prevent the cryptocurrency from inflation, a particular set number of XEM coins circulates in the NEM system and there is no mining provided.

What is NEM used for?

The cryptocurrency allows to effectively interact with public and private blockchains, so NEM can be used by companies that provide financial services. Companies can quickly transfer currency, tokens or files from their internal networks through a public blockchain into another company's network. NEM also provides an opportunity to easily launch cryptocurrency or digital tokens. NEM blocks are generated in 60 seconds, so the platform is convenient for making mobile transactions. Moreover, low commissions ensure that small payments are cost-effective. NEM can enable users to create some kind of payment applications, such as NEMPay. NEMPay is an open source payment application that allows to use blockchain for peer-to-peer payments. You can just copy it, add the name of your own cryptocurrency or token, add your logo - and get your branded payment app.

What are the prospects of NEM?

Today NEM is indeed one of the leading digital currencies on the market, and the project itself is based on an interesting and demanded idea, implemented with unique technical solutions. Not long ago a large Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was hacked and $500 million in XEM were stolen. It shows that not only cryptocommunity is interested in these coins but also criminal community. NEM ecosystem can provide a platform not only for cryptocurrency startups but also for many other commercial and noncommercial needs, so it is actually rather useful. Although, NEM is obviously not that popular as other top virtual currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Ripple, many investors have already decided to include some coins in their crypto-investment portfolio. Anyway, no one can make a firm statement what will happen to this cryptocurrency and the market in the long term.