People say DYOR, as in "do your own research".
So that's what I'm doing. And I'm sharing it with the Steemit community because that will encourage me to actually record notes in one place rather than spending 6 hours researching twelve different coins to only remember what 3 of them do just a few days later.
I'm not going to give any advice or make predictions on price.
If I ever make a post with a coin I have a stake in, I will announce that. I only own a single coin right now, and I'm not going to do a MOR post about it because I already did the research.
No more ados,
The website is well designed. The homepage has a video introduction and if you scroll down it gets straight to the point of what a lot of ask when we're researching a cryptocurrency: "what makes this one different?"
Their first answer they provide is the consensus mechanism (the "Performance" tab). Rather than being PoW or PoS, NEM uses what it calls PoI or "Proof of Importance". This system combines three measures to determine harvesting (NEM's mining equivalent): number of vested* coins, the number of unique transaction partners, and the number and size of transactions.
Their description under ease of development is already concise so here it is.
Under the deep customization tab, they assert that NEM was specifically designed for modularity.
I don't have the technical expertise to summarize their security tab, so here it is.
Beyond the initial pitch, the site offers moves on to explain their "Smart Asset System". It's an interesting read, but the main points are that it's modular, customizable and has many use cases.
Overall the website is informative and, perhaps more importantly, inviting (particularly the developer page).
NEM subreddit stats
Hopefuls & Doubtfuls
Hopefuls:
-phenomenal website presentation
-growing community
-XEM is necessary to do stuff on the NEM network
-allows for highly customizable token creation
-they have a foundation
-the Proof of Importance consensus mechanism is a difference whose advantages are understandable to laypeople
-partnerships with companies (including companies outside the distributed ledger space)
Doubtfuls:
-High market cap already
-More well-known cryptocurrencies competing for the same space (I know that all cryptos aren't mutually exclusive, but those that vie for the same utility are at odds-- if 90% of developers use Ethereum or NEM or NEO for their smart contracts, then there will be more support for a new developer for that platform)
-Technological advantages can be coopted: what's to stop NEO from switching to PoI if it proves to be a better mechanism? I.E. great tech doesn't guarantee success. Similarly the ease of use advantage may be undone by a service like BlockCAT, which seeks to build an interface that allows smart contracts for non-programmers
-It's hard to figure out who the important figures in NEM are. The page for the foundation gives names, faces, and the occasional Twitter or LinkedIn link, but doesn't list any credentials
-No published roadmap
That's it for NEM. Let me know what information you were curious about that you didn't see here, and I'll try to include similar information in the next one. If you have a request for which I coin I should do next, let me know.
Thanks for reading and Happy Hunting!