Wei Tang (left) and Makoto Takemiya (right), co-founders of NEM during ICO launch On January 31st 2014, UtopianFuture (a member of bitcointalk forum) started NEM as New Economy Movement or Nuem . It was intended as a fork of NXT, the second-oldest cryptocurrency in existence after Bitcoin. However, when UtopianFuture ran into legal trouble with NXT's founder BCNext (real name: anonymous), he announced on February 3rd that NEM would be developed by an entirely new team of developers led by makoto_takemiya and also referred as the NEM dev team.
On March 31st 2014, another co-founder of NEM (Wei Tang) became known as UIAssetManager. He was assigned as "in charge of creating and selling all the assets" by owners of XEM tokens (token holders during ICO). The other members include Hitters Xu (makoto_takemi), Head Developer at Nebulas Foundation, co-founder at AntShares (NEO), member of Bitcoin Foundation; Jeff McDonald (jeffe_mcdonald), VP of Technology & Operations at OATH Protocol; Lon Wong (dragonballaf) , President Pro Tempore at NEM.io Foundation Council, CEO at Dragonfly Fintech Pte Ltd and Co-Founder of Onchain; Lai Liang (freelai_org), developer for Andui; Nelson Valero (nelsontheboss) Developer Advocate at Oracle Cloud Platform; Daniel Pasaribu, CTO/COO Rebit.
Photo of team members posted by NEM community to celebrate the success of Testnet Catapult which was released Pundi X will be the first product to implement NEM technology in their POS solution for retailers The launch campaign started with a crowd funding campaign on March 31st 2014 and raised 9,999 Bitcoins through 91 participants during the 45 days campaign. XEMs, or NEM coins are generated through Proof-of-Importance algorithm instead of PoW/PoS that is used by other cryptocurrencies. To receive new coins, one must run "harvesters" nodes that validate transactions and secure the network. NEM projects a future, where private and public organizations use blockchain technology to reduce costs and improve transparency.
NEM also aims to be a platform that can run on devices from smartphones to tablets to internet of things (IoT) machines. Eventually the company wants anyone to be able to create their own cryptocurrency or token through their software without any coding requirements which would enable people with no knowledge of programming or blockchain technology launch their own cryptocurrencies more easily. In November 2017, NEM Foundation have announced its first major project after ICO – Pundi X POS terminal for retail industry powered by open source blockchain-based operating system NEM . On Sep 21st 2018, Tech Bureau's Zaif crypto exchange officially launched a mobile version of its trading platform. The app is now available for both iOS and Android devices, with the main change being that users are no longer required to register their names or IDs when conducting transactions.
On October 23rd 2018, NEM Foundation unveiled a new roadmap that extends through 2019 and beyond, including plans to create enterprise blockchains, implement private chains on the network , build out commercial dApps on NEM's blockchain, integrate NEM with third-party eCommerce solutions like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento 2 . Image credits: Jason Wong (left), Head of Blockchain Lab at Nema; Lon Wong (right), President Pro Tempore at NEM.io Foundation Council & CEO at Dragonfly Fintech Pte Ltd.
