Review on NEM by Mohammad Shuja

In the beginning, NEM was only a fork of the NXT blockchain, but the development team went back to the drawing board and came up with their own unique technology, which eventually became the foundation of the NEM blockchain. An open call for involvement on the Bitcointalk forum, where a proposal for a community-oriented cryptocurrency was published in 2014, resulted in the creation of the project.



It has chosen a consensus method called proof-of-importance, which differs from the proof-of-work used by Bitcoin and the proof-of-stake used by Peercoin. In essence, it works on the concept of rewarding individuals who not only possess more NEM tokens but also participate more actively on the network with greater block rewards and advantages. An active user with fewer NEM coins may thus have a greater stake in the rewards than a passive user who owns a large number of NEM coins but does not contribute to the network.



Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, NEM's programming is entirely unique, as opposed to using previous coins as a foundation. Unlike the conventional proof-of-work, or even proof-of-stake, the consensus system has its own consensus algorithm. In contrast to proof-of-stake, the proof-of-importance protocol allows for taking both the number of coins held and the activity level of the account into consideration when distributing block rewards or transaction fees. The uniqueness of the coin's situation where its total price (and total market cap) are concerned, together with the lack of significant change over time when it comes to that price, as well as its low individual worth, makes it stand out even more from other cryptocurrencies. To be more efficient and quicker than even the large financial corporation Visa, it claims that it processes transactions at a pace of 4000 transactions per second.



XEM is a rather ancient cryptocurrency, with a much lower individual price than many of its predecessors due to its age. As far as its value is concerned, it has been rather constant so far, and it does not seem to be in any rush to increase or decrease in value in the near future. All of these may make it a less appealing currency to hold as an investment. However, the fact that its individual price is now so cheap is a strong incentive to purchase big quantities of the currency at this time. Through the use of the Proof of Importance consensus mechanism, anybody who owns or controls more than 10,000 NEM tokens and participates on the platform is entitled to receive block rewards and a portion of transaction fees. As a result, it is a currency that generates continual returns, but the rewards may not be very substantial each time.