NEM's Reason D'etreThere seems to be an interesting ongoing discussion regarding the unclaimed stakes.
I think we get far too easily carried away and decide on important things without putting some serious thought in their possible outcomes. In fact it often seems the most effective way to make important decisions is not to start from the point where we find ourselves at, but instead from the desired outcome, as if it had already happened, and reverse-engineer things from there, attempting to see what needed to have happened in order for us to get there. As Paul Graham put it, you have to "live in the future and build what's missing".
At the moment I think all the talk about getting more people into NEM and spreading NEM is somewhat misguided. Not because this is an undesirable thing, quite the contrary, it is rather because "more people coming to NEM" and "spreading NEM" happens as an effect of NEM having an obvious and unique utility which adds value to their life. Now, what is the reason d'etre for NEM? What is our native app? What do we offer that people love? What is our target or final purpose? I think these are some very important questions to ask ourselves. In fact as we approach beta and official launch, it may be the right moment to think about how NEM could move forward and become a real and novel economy, the premiere technological platform to build on and a very useful product which people would love.
When looking at the version of the future where NEM has succeeded, it becomes obvious that NEM has had to meet some necessary, though maybe not sufficient, conditions in order to achieve it. One of these conditions is without a doubt, speed of development. We are at a point in time where things evolve with increasing speed, and crypto is an ever changing field; in this context NEM finds itself on the cutting edge of the wave. We are setting now the foundation for the things to come and have a pretty good shot to become the "dominant species"
if and only if we manage to act in a swiftly manner.
Our dev team has done a fantastic job up until now, putting an enormous amount of time, energy and effort into bringing NEM where it is today. Though as most of us here, they are quite limited in their resources, having day jobs and a whole lot of other things to take care of. Now think about if for a second, wouldn't it be great if at launch, we could assemble the most robust and agile full time development team in crypto? What if we would use our current position to run NEM at least for one year as a decentralized hybrid startup? When I say startup, I mean it as the most productive economic entity, trying to reach our target at full speed, in the most effective manner. What results would we be able to achieve if we would shift our view from asking "how can I get more NEM" to "what is the most effective way to reach our target in time with the given resources"?
Imagine how fast we could move forward if we would find a way to get our dev team to join full time. In addition to that, think how much better the team would be if we would also have someone full time on marketing, working side by side with a growth hacker to ensure effective and valuable ways to add new NEMsters. Some of the most essential qualities of a startup are speed and growth, if we would unite and pledge the needed resources to solve these two important problems, I have no doubt a lot of people would hear about NEM, and would start using NEM, and would love NEM, because before that, we would have created an insanely awesome NEM product. At least this is how a version of the future looks where NEM has already succeeded.
In addition to all that, I think such a strategic move would naturally increase the value of NEM more than any other option and would also give NEM a real shot at becoming what it was meant for.
P.S. I do agree with conclusion of
this article and will quote it here, it should serve as a good lesson of what I am speaking about:
"The market price of an asset in the short term is driven by emotion (greed vs fear), liquidity, technical factors, and a bunch of other things. Right now, those factors are driving down the price of Bitcoin. Last year they drove it up.
I continue to believe that the thing to watch is not the price chart, the volume chart, or any chart. The thing to look at is Github, Hackathons, Accelerators, and everywhere else that entrepreneurs and developers showcase their work. That’s where the future of Bitcoin and its promise will be determined. And right now, based on what I’m seeing, it’s future is very bright."
This is an excellent post and one that really takes NEM in the right direction. I do think it is very valuable to increase the devs ability to make NEM better and hopefully work full time.
That being said, I think so of the most exciting growth from Bitcoin has not come necessarily from Bitcoin itself, but from all the third parties that are working on it to expand it.
I would love to see ideas taken and brainstormed about what would the future financially system look like and how could NEM grow to meet those needs. If either the devs or third parties met those needs, it would be just fine with me. But yes, the core code will need a lot of work. The three main competitors I see against NEM are Emunie, NXT, and Ethereum. NEM will have stiff competition in each of these in many ways. We need lots and lots of development, not just making the original stakeholders richer.
I would love to see something set up that really encourages third parties to come to NEM and make it better. I think Makato mentioned this somewhere.
But whatever it is, for the long term goal of NEM being great, it needs to be handled with the upmost clarity, transparently and in a way that is completely clean. Crypto is surrounded in scandel. NEM needs to rise above this and be the clean blockchain with an honest start.
I do also agree that if NEM is to be a serious contender, it needs a full time dev and full time marketing team. No successful companies are made by part timers. The core group needs to go all in.
