NEM Holdings, the not-for-profit holding company of NEM Ventures, and the NEM Foundation, today announced the creation of NEM Studios, a dedicated strategy and backend development unit to support the ongoing development of Catapult – the next generation of the NEM protocol.

What is Catapult?

Catapult is a full-featured blockchain engine planned for release later in 2019, that can power both private and public networks with its unique smart contract plugins. These plugins enable bulletproof digital asset creation, decentralized swaps, advanced account systems, and business logic modeling.

Under the guidance of NEM Studios and the NEM Foundation, Catapult will become the core NEM engine.

NEM Studios

The mission of NEM Studios is to assist in the delivery of a high speed, configurable and scalable blockchain solution to enterprises across the globe.

As a part of the NEM Holdings group, with development activities funded directly by NEM Core, NEM Studios will be responsible for the recruitment of an experienced CTO and a team of developers who will assist with the development of the Catapult Core protocol and API layer.

The CTO will work in a matrix with the NEM Foundation supporting the continued development of client tools and supporting technologies to make enterprise adoption smoother.

NEM Studios will be led by David Shaw, who will serve as Director. NEM Studios will be contracted by the NEM Foundation under the newly introduced service provider model to deliver the go-to-market strategy for Catapult in advance of its launch later in 2019. A steering committee will lead the go-to-market strategy and comprise of David Shaw, Alexandra Tinsman, and Nate D’Amico.

Under the guidance of NEM Studios and the NEM Foundation, Catapult will become the core NEM engine, powering both private and public blockchains. Features will include unique smart contract plug-ins to enable a wide range of capabilities such as digital asset creation, decentralized swaps, advanced account systems, and business logic modeling.