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Nimiq 2020
Over the last months, Team Nimiq has been hard at work, planning and preparing for the future. Now, we are excited to share these plans for this year with our Nimiq supporters.
29 Jan 2020
by
8 min
Recap
2019 was an eventful year for Nimiq. Albatross, Nimiq’s unique Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, took shape and its test-environment performance surpassed the team’s expectations.
Nimiq OASIS successfully executed the first crypto-to-fiat atomic swap and, together with Matthias von Hauff’s TEN31 Bank, development is ongoing to empower the non-custodial buying and selling of crypto.
The new Nimiq Checkout was released, enhancing the payment system with an easy tool for merchants and webshop vendors to earn BTC and ETH alongside NIM.
The list goes on, but a recap cannot neglect the fact that NIM has remained under the radar during 2019. Despite the advances in product and protocol, public awareness and real-world adoption remain unsolved challenges. We recognize and share concerns voiced by the community and are committed to adopt positive changes.
To prove our commitment, team members mutually agreed to significant, additional cuts to their contracting compensations. Moreover the team was able to attract more talent, including Mathéo (Front-end Engineer), Max (Event & Biz Dev) and Bruno (Blockchain Engineer) joining the team. Additionally, all team members receive a portion of their compensation in NIM, accepting a rate currently 8x higher than the market value. Even external collaborators joined in on the effort and reduced their compensations as well.
Ultimately, our partners and we believe that we are contributing to something meaningful and we are convinced of Nimiq’s future success.
The overall spirit at Nimiq is more positive than ever. We now are working on unique technology able to solve many of the challenges crypto is facing today: accessibility, usability, scalability and – for us still the most essential – simplicity.
For 2020, the team made a plan to finalize and ship the pending technologies as well as building them into ready-to-use products and to roll them in a physical location. So without further ado, here are the cornerstones of our 2020 vision.
Let your NIM work for you
The switch to PoS will introduce fundamental improvements to the network’s performance and economics.
The significance can be illustrated by our projection of energy consumption per transaction. Currently, a transaction at full network capacity requires the equivalent energy of ten AA batteries. With Albatross, it’s 1.5% of one AA battery.
Staking will not only lower energy consumption. With Nimiq, it will further lower the barriers for everyday people to receive rewards, while supporting the network. As we have proven with the account creation, we are now setting out to deliver the easiest and most accessible staking feature ever.
UI mock-up of the soon-to-be-released staking calculator.
Leveraging Bitcoin
From the very beginning, Nimiq aimed to deliver a more accessible, more user-friendly version of Bitcoin technology suitable for everyday people and payments.
We are close to the point where we can provide a payment system that lives up to this aspiration: Decentralized and non-custodial payments, almost instantaneous and accessible to everyone. Still, we believe in Bitcoin as a store of value and want to support it within our ecosystem.
Going forward, we will integrate Bitcoin in new Nimiq products.
Bitcoin and NIM don’t compete – they complete each other: While Bitcoin is the established store of value, NIM is the convenient and fast way to pay – while getting staking rewards along the way – both coins have clear roles.
This “Trojan Horse” strategy presents several advantages and opportunities. We can leverage BTC to address the wider crypto community with Nimiq's innovations (easy-to-use Login Files, buying and selling for Fiat via OASIS etc.). Irrespectively this will contribute to and strengthen crypto in general – something that genuinely matters to us.
By supporting Bitcoin, we become a relevant choice for beginners who are primarily interested in BTC.
This way, Nimiq’s strengths become visible to a broader audience.
We strive to deliver a single solution for buying, holding and transacting NIM and BTC that is decentralized, requires no personal data and is easy to use.
Converting these new Bitcoin-friendly users to try out NIM will be facilitated by a persuasive UX and NIM’s obvious advantages in performance and usability. Staking, and thus getting passive rewards, will be a compelling argument for NIM as well.
New wallet, new mobile app
To accommodate all these new features, we will enhance the current browser experience by introducing an entirely new Nimiq Safe Wallet. This redesign will ultimately streamline the interfaces across the entire user experience on all devices, including mobile. But we are not stopping there. A long-term wish of the community and the team will be fulfilled this year.
We are building a mobile app that will combine the features of Nimiq in a single product.
This app will feature
- NIM and BTC in one account (one Login File, one password)
- Complete wallet functionality, elegantly designed
- Non-custodial buying and selling of NIM and BTC
- Easy NIM staking
… making it the most essential, decentralized cryptocurrency wallet to date.
The user experience on mobiles will be significantly increased by leveraging native functionality like fingerprint sensors and integrating Hub and Keyguard. Security will be further enhanced while simplifying accessibility.
Additionally, the mobile app will be a product that is easier to grasp and to market. A mobile app – always visible and available on a user’s home screen – conveys an enhanced feeling of ownership, custody and security.
Concept and design work has already started, development will begin at the end of January.
Don't buy Crypto, earn it!
As Andreas Antonopoulos proclaimed: ‘Don't buy Bitcoin, EARN it’. We, too, believe there is a huge opportunity in addressing the large community of freelancers and individual business owners who are interested in crypto. But for many, getting a wallet and buying over an exchange comes with complexity, privacy matters and an effort that is often overwhelming.
We are releasing Cryptopayment
This link can be conveniently included in invoices, sent as a message or be printed as a QR code. The buyer simply opens the link, is provided with easy instructions to pay the market rate amount due in crypto.
With this, we provide an easy tool for anyone, anywhere to take advantage of the promotional effect of expanding their audience to crypto-paying customers, as well as earn their first crypto.
Generate revenue to grow the Nimiq community
While we are working on solutions that we hope will benefit the entire crypto sphere, we have identified and – in part – already implemented solutions that hold great potential for monetization.
OASIS is such an example. All transactions executed via TEN31 Bank are expected to generate direct and indirect revenue for Nimiq, a shareholder of TEN31 and enabler of the service.
A new essential building block to facilitate OASIS powered transactions is the Fiat Atomic Swap Trader (FAST). FAST is a market maker created by Nimiq, that will not only empower OASIS with instant liquidity as needed, but may also be integrated with third parties, like DEXs.
We will provide more info on these developments in time. For now, we want to point out that Team Nimiq will use all earnings resulting from these efforts to fund and promote the Nimiq project – nothing else.
Answering “But what can I do with it?”
Crypto in general — and an upcoming coin like Nimiq especially — is faced with the reasonable question of where and what it can actually be used for.
Several projects have kicked off efforts to establish and integrate themselves in economically challenged communities and crisis riddled regions. While we have nothing but respect for each and every one of these efforts, we believe that it’s too early to expect significant adoption to be achieved this way in a relatively short time-horizon. Although we are confident that it’s only a matter of time before crypto takes off in economically challenged communities and beyond, we believe that dedicating a significant proportion of the project’s resources to such an effort is unwise at this stage.
Considering this, we will continue innovating and developing, to be ready once the necessity and value of a decentralized payment system are globally recognized.
Does this mean we won’t promote Nimiq’s usage? Quite the opposite:
Nimiq was born in a small beach town (Santa Teresa) in Costa Rica. The town mainly consists of a small road parallel to the beach with a few thousand locals and tens of thousands of traveling visitors throughout the year. Formerly a fishing village, its sheer natural beauty, healthy lifestyle and pristine beaches have made it a 5-star travel destination, attracting an influential, well-situated and international crowd.
With native Costa Ricans and long-term residents on the team, we managed to establish excellent connections with local merchants and businesses. And while the rest of the world will have to wait, we plan on introducing Nimiq as a means of earning crypto and as payment method throughout the local surf shops, bars and hotels. This way, we will get:
- A confined but real environment, allowing us to test and improve our products continuously and with a tight feedback loop
- More transactions on the network increasing trading volume, resulting in:
- Income for the project by funnelling conversions through OASIS and FAST
- A strong answer to the question of what NIM can be used for
Most importantly, we want to leverage the continuous influx of influential people with disposable income. With Instagram influencers, private investors and executives visiting the picturesque destination, we can put Nimiq in the hands of this valuable target audience.
This year, we look to establish a strong presence in this area, creating a resource-saving growth hack, improving our products and giving every holder an amazing way to actually spend their NIM and BTC – all by visiting this place in paradise.
Let’s get started!
We will provide more in-depth information on the various aspects laid out in this blog post in time. For now, we wanted to share the highlights for this year as we feel genuinely excited about them and what the future holds for Nimiq.
Until then,
Go Nimiq! And Pura Vida!
Disclaimer
None of the statements must be viewed as an endorsement or recommendation for Nimiq, any cryptocurrency, or investment product. Neither the information, nor any opinion contained herein constitutes a solicitation or offer by the creators or participants to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments or provide any investment advice or service. All statements contained in statements made in Nimiq’s web pages, blogs, social media, press releases, or in any place accessible by the public, and oral statements that may be made by Nimiq or project associates that are not statements of historical fact, constitute “forward-looking statements”. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual future results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expected, expressed, or implied by such forward-looking statements. The final decision of implementing any changes to the Nimiq protocol, including its parameters, always remains with the decentralized node operators who agree what version and parameters to deploy and support.