It has been one year since bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have been on the public eye as most of the digital assets astronomical rise in valuation and demand went up in 2017. Hyped everywhere, cryptocurrency conversations went from a bitcointalk fun chat between developers to worldwide discussion for a better usage of blockchain between the IMF and the United Nations. Warren Buffett, Lionel Messi, Floyd Mayweather were some few individuals giving their take in favor or against it. Everyone has their opinion about bitcoin and blockchain, some oversaw its potentials and ideated uses, very few understood how to bring them to practicality and work on them.

Blockchain 2.0

Cryptocurrencies have been the most successful use case for blockchain technology up to date, with Litecoin, Zcash, and Monero forking bitcoins code for peer to peer transactions with cryptographic security. Vitalik Buterin introduced the use of the tech for smart contracts and dealing with untrusted parties without the need of a third part and make each transaction of “information and data” decentralized. Now we are on a race for the killer app that will attract mass adoption to the industry just like the email protocol did for the internet boom.

Introducing NEM

New Economy Movement (NEM) is a blockchain powered platform build for enterprises and businesses in mind launched in 2015. They introduced the term “Smart Asset” and Proof Of Importance (POI) consensus that doesn't use miners but “harvester” and super nodes to validate transactions without the need of special hardware. Smart assets allow developers to customize smart contracts, tokens, addresses, ownership and transactions. They use a multisignature accounts, encrypted messaging, and an Eigentrust++ reputation system to facilitate voting, data storage, crowdfunding, and loyalty reward program within the network. NEM currently stands at #16 according to CoinLib, has a market cap of $1.7 Billion and a price of $0.17.

What sets them apart

NEM is concentrating their resources on community and shipping products (we will talk about the community in another article). From basic applications such as NEM wallets to store your token online/offline to a 2 Factor Confirmation to an app that secures your account assets from being stolen.

Here some of the most interesting NEM use cases:

Landstead

Landstead uses NEM blockchain technology to create a registry of land and property, allowing government and citizens to co-create an open blockchain system that can be trusted and consulted by interested parties. Wars, exoduses, and conflicts can leave families running away from their homes with little possessions to take with them. Many times their houses are overtaken by other people due to the vacancy thus losing ownership over the real estate and with little registry, no proof of ownership of original owner. If governments are able to ethically insert factual data about real estate ownership, citizens leaving their property due to any reason, wont have to worry about losing ownership.

Remember that a public blockchain is a good as the information inserted in, so this project will have to collaborate with governments and land registries to make sure data is as accurate as possible.

ioNEM

In a near future, our machines and electronics will be able to communicate with each other for our needs. This is called Internet Of Things (IoT), and blockchain technology can boost the technology into mainstream to the ability to communicate in a trustless and decentralized nature. ioNEM allows machines to interact with one another off/on chain in a secure and decentralized manner.

For example if your smart fridge notices a need of milk in your fridge. It will send a message to Walmarts smart fridge IoT communication platform system. Then Walmarts system will send a message to the smart fridges owner about the lack of milk, and ask if they want Walmart to send them milk. This is an example of IoT communicating with oen another in a cryptographic secured way without exposing much data about the owner. NEM will facilitate such communication between machines.

PacNEM

Games are a huge usage for blockchain technology facilitating a reward system for gamers. Cryptokitties has been the most popular decentralized application build on top of Ethereums ERC-721 collectible standard. NEM developers created a decentralized,open source and multiplayer PacMan game on top of NEMs blockchain for users to interact with the network. You get rewarded with NEM tokens for achieving feats, and high scores. Developers created an option for advertisers to pay with NEM to sponsor their products to interested users.

Pacman is just an example of a game that can be built on top of the NEM blockchain, think about being able to liquidate those candy crush points, and Flappy Birds high scores! This would create a new economy for gamers that will be able to show productivity to their parents earning a passive income on their way home from school.

LuxTag

My personal favorite as I got to know some of the team, LuxTag first began to offer blockchain powered solutions to luxury brands in Malaysia. As time passed by, they have pivoted to digitize products for anti theft and counterfeit security. Using the NEM blockchain, they create certificates of authenticity within a decentralized network for companies and manufactures to communicate about certain product in a trustless environment. Definitely keep an eye on this project!

The sky is the limit for blockchain applications; developers have to work on building products, and businessman shipping them to launch THAT killer app that will give the average citizen an “AHHH” moment understanding the usage of blockchain technology.

By Menajem Benchimol.