An Interview With NEM Catapult Core Developer Kaiyzen

Part of the Catapult (mijin v.2) Preview Beta Launch Series With Alex Tinsman, Global Director of Communications for NEM

NEM Catapult is the highly anticipated update to the NEM blockchain. The NEM Catapult Private Developer Beta is in full force with hundreds of participants from all over the world. This Beta showcases the technology that will first be used for the private chains and then later for the NEM public chain. Tech Bureau NEM Core Developer, Kaiyzen, will be at the Consensus blockchain technology summit in New York on May 14–16 along with 70+ NEM partners and team members. Come by the Sutton Center Pavilion to say hello! Until then, I grabbed some time with him this week to chat about the benefits of building on NEM. — Alexandra

Alexandra Tinsman and Kaiyzen from Tech Bureau

1. What’s your role on the development team?

I’m a member of the Tech Bureau product team, helping to manage and deliver the Catapult/mijin product line, as well as the design and roll out of Tech Bureau’s COMSA service. A lot of what I do is helping teams create and deploy powerful blockchain solutions using NEM.

2. Why should developers choose NEM for their projects?

Developing on NEM is practical. You just have to be a regular developer to get started and learn the protocol, simple SDK+REST interface and developer experience. There’s no need to train up being a “blockchain expert” first. One of the things I like about NEM is that you can safely scale and deploy (unlike some of the other blockchains.)

The project will be open sourced which should accelerate adoption of the NEM protocol. Our team is working on making the on-boarding process for developers quicker & more intuitive. One of the ways we’re doing this is by building out more robust libraries, hiring more developers to support our platform and just improving our overall documentation. The team has spent the past two and half years getting Version 2 of the protocol ready via the Catapult platform. It’s paid off. We’re now seeing more developers and companies move over to NEM because it’s been tested and has proven to be safe and scalable. I encourage companies and devs interested in learning more to apply to the beta and begin building.

We have some new features to blockchain that devs should be checking out — specifically aggregated transactions and multi-level multisignature accounts. These offer new uses that have never been available on any blockchain and can save devs time and money building out projects for their clients and customers.

3. What do you think the NEM technology does better than other blockchains?

It was designed for simplicity and works with a wide range of use cases. Developers can deploy on NEM — something that’s challenging on other blockchain platforms.

I also appreciate that we have a strong community that has had a positive impact on NEM over the years.

4. Catapult has been doing a lot of user testing. How are you integrating user feedback into the product?

Testing is happening in three phases. Right now, we’re in Phase 1 which is the Catapult Developer Preview and SDK release. Next happens pretty much simultaneously and that’s the evaluation release of Catapult’s core engine. Most of the early feedback was around the Javascript SDK and getting started documentation, with both being updated regularly based on the feedback. The response has been positive and encouraging.

The last is Phase 3 which is the dual-licensing of Catapult in both open source and commercial licenses. There will be a lot of interesting use cases to talk about when this happens.

5. What can the community do to help NEM succeed?

I want more developers to share their use cases and use the various SDKs and features that Catapult/mijin provides. We want people to test new features as we release updates. Also many of the platforms and applications are community driven so by participating, developers are having a big impact on the success of future companies building with NEM.

Besides using our SDKs, sharing and creating open source content as well as videos, training materials or technical articles is something the community can continue to do that will result in long-term success for the NEM protocol.