Over the past few months, we’ve experienced a tremendous (and very exciting) amount of growth across the board: tech development, team expansion, and support from blockchain enthusiasts. We attribute much of our success to the ultra-engaged NEM and Ethereum communities, as well as the technology we’re building upon.

Throughout our development process, we’ve received and considered comments from the NEM Foundation’s members and community. This has been among our most useful and productive feedback. We’re humbled and grateful to the people who’ve generously offered us their thoughts and expertise. To further learn about the technology behind NEM, I recently traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet with Lon Wong, President of the NEM.io Foundation and an advisor to Qchain.

A Common Vision

Lon and I met in a quiet hotel cafe in KL Sentral, a bustling urban center built around Malaysia’s largest transit hub. Hours flew by as we discussed NEM and Qchain, and I left the conversation with an even more unshakeable faith in our vision. Lon’s passion and excitement were clear: He has the technical, business, and leadership chops to bring NEM to the forefront of the maturing landscape of blockchain tech.

Consequently, he reinforced my strong belief in NEM, both as a complementary base for Qchain, as well as a leader in blockchain revolution and future powerhouse. His excitement mirrored the excitement espoused by Qchain’s team — which was very encouraging to experience.

A key takeaway from our discussion was how clear it was that NEM and Qchain are philosophically aligned on many important issues. For instance, to promote adoption, Lon and I discussed the need for easy-to-learn, portable, and secure front end code for blockchain technologies that would make blockchain solutions more attractive for businesses. Blockchain coding should be adaptable and flexible for companies and users to tune blockchains for their particular needs. We at Qchain definitely admire the NEM Infrastructure Server that NEM core devs are building to make their technology easier for businesses to work with and leave the door open for seamless transition to future updates and releases.

Additionally, on the note of adoption, we discussed the importance of prioritizing scalability as more business and users adopt blockchain technology, sometimes in unforeseen spurts. We also agreed on the need to think in detail about enterprise operations that should be computed on-chain or off-chain, before blindly committing a workflow to on-chain technology at a cost of efficiency. Putting too many operations on-chain could result in a loss of scalability.

Rather than decentralizing everything for the sake of it, it’s important for us to focus on making truly useful tech that everyday and enterprise users alike will be incentivized to use, first and foremost because it provides them with real advantages and fits into their existing workflows.

We believe that blockchain technology will enable a new wave of better, more useful, and more accessible applications, and we strive to work toward this goal.

The Malaysian Scene

Beyond getting into the nitty gritty of NEM, Kuala Lumpur provided a remarkably rich cultural experience in my short stay. I was blown away by Malaysian culture and its receptiveness to blockchain technology. The capital is home to a number of cryptocurrency think tanks and innovative companies — and the NEM Foundation, based in neighboring Singapore, has its roots in Kuala Lumpur. The city is unquestionably a major hub for blockchain technology and next-generation fintech.

All of this made me even more excited for another major development in the global blockchain scene: the upcoming Blockchain Center in Kuala Lumpur — a joint effort by NEM Foundation and Blockchain Global. This is exactly the kind of outreach that the Qchain team is thrilled to see, and we hope to bear witness to many more comparable developments in the future.

Of course, Malaysia is much more than just fintech and blockchain — and I felt immensely privileged to take part in the larger the dynamism of the country: the cultural sites, the street life, the food. The mix of history, culture, and advanced technology was truly inspiring.

Looking Forward

My trip left me feeling confident in our choice to build upon NEM. We are privileged to be working with an outstanding NEM dev and community members; our wallet will be co-signed by two of these trusted individuals. We value these relationships greatly and thank you for your support.

As we move ahead, we’re looking forward to more interaction with NEM devs and the NEM community, as well as integration of its technology. We’re excited to continue the development of the tech behind our innovative three-agent user model and novel proof-of-interaction protocol, and to integrate them with powerful NEM features like mosaics and proof of importance.

Overall, NEM’s values epitomize what Qchain aspires to be: usable and secure, with scalable technology. The team and I couldn’t be more thrilled for the future of NEM, Catapult, and Qchain development — and perhaps most important of all, building a piece of blockchain’s bright future.