Nimiq is a mission-oriented cryptocurrency designed for the MASSES. It is a microcap coin flying under the radar of many crypto investors. As of publishing time, NIM is ranked #464 on CoinMarketCap with a price of $0.01 and a market cap of $79M.
[ THE IDEA ]
Nimiq has a really great idea because they want to revolutionize money and bring universal access to crypto for EVERYONE. Crypto is already revolutionary but Nimiq’s objective is to be the project that keeps helping people become AS INDEPENDENT AS POSSIBLE from third parties and continuously meeting the demands of their market.
They are working non-stop on the following:
- Censorship-resistant digital money
- Payments system
- App ecosystem
- Scaling
They have a strong focus on keeping things simple to drive mass adoption but at the same time provide the privacy and security that DECENTRALIZED cryptocurrencies have.
Crypto for Everybody
Even though there are obvious advantages in using crypto and holding your own assets, it is understandable that non-tech-savvy users are more inclined to utilize easier-to-use payment methods.
Nimiq learned from commercial payment providers that user-friendly and frictionless payments are the key for user adoption, especially that they directly influence the perceived reputation of a system which gives users more confidence in trusting this system with their money.
[ THE PRODUCT ]
Nimiq and its developers are actively working on turning great ideas into great products that users love. This is very important because most startups die when they fail to make products that are user-friendly. This is something that Y Combinator, one of the world’s most successful accelerators, can’t stress enough.
Nimiq is addressing these four angles:
- Scalability
- Accessibility
- Usability
- Interoperability
Browser-based
Nimiq makes complicated blockchain accessible for everyone.
Anyone with an up-to-date browser can join the payment network directly and pay or accept payments without installing software or relying on unnecessary intermediaries.
Its blockchain technology is inspired by Bitcoin but designed to run in your browser. With other blockchains, your browser needs to connect to a node (server) in order to access the blockchain network. With Nimiq, your browser becomes a node in the Nimiq blockchain network.
One of the advantages of Nimiq’s Browser Clients is that they are able to achieve consensus on their own without the need to trust information provided by a third party. This brings a level of censorship-resistance equivalent to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (but Bitcoin ALWAYS REQUIRES a predefined THIRD PARTY NODE to broadcast transactions which sucks).
What can you do with Nimiq?
- Pay online
- Send or receive it as digital money
- Cross-border payments
- Store of value
- Donations
- and more! (<- this is actually a link)
Blockchain Streamlined for the Web
Nimiq is building a blockchain optimized for the web to provide the liberating features of blockchain-based payments to the masses. They want to exceed the expectations of users who are addicted to the convenience of web apps that rely on centralized servers and legacy technology.
The centralized systems where these web apps run (like banks and their servers) come with a major issue - only a single entity holds custody of the assets and this is really risky.
With Nimiq, each user connects to MULTIPLE peers and receives the info needed to check their balance. Nimiq is built using state-of-the-art cryptography, blockchain, and web technology to achieve results that level the playing field with popular centralized web payment processors. All this while being true to the cryptocurrency spirit of borderless decentralization, neutrality, and censorship-resistance.
Nimiq OASIS
This is HUGE.
Nimiq wants to bridge the gap between traditional banking and cryptocurrency ecosystems. These ecosystems can be viewed presently as separate planets where it’s not possible to directly and trustlessly transact value between the two. OASIS will provide the foundation for convenient and low-cost value exchange.
What is OASIS?
- It’s an acronym for Nimiq Open Asset Swap Interaction Scheme
- Blueprint for crypto-to-fiat bridge
- Making fiat currencies or assets behave like tokens on the blockchain
- An open technology that anyone can use and implement
Peer-to-Peer Fiat-Crypto Bridge
Since MOST PEOPLE in the world are still using CENTRALIZED traditional financial institutions, it only makes sense for crypto ecosystems to collaborate with them in complementary ways in order to achieve mass adoption and at the same time provide freedom of choice for the people.
OASIS is the bridge that makes fiat currency understand and interact with blockchain. Its first version focuses on making Euro bank accounts (USD and others next) the programmable counterparty to non-custodial transactions to buy or sell crypto.
The first real-world transactions powered by OASIS will be facilitated by Ten31 (WEG Bank AG’s FinTech offshoot) on the banking side and a Decentralized Exchange (or market making entity) on the non-custodial crypto exchange side. After an introductory period, OASIS will be open to OTHER banks and DEXs to tie in to make this system truly decentralized.
Nimiq is part of a Decentralized Finance ecosystem that revolves around Ten31.
Nimiq will also use OASIS to offer a crypto payment solution for online merchants dubbed as 'Nimiq Checkout' and will also introduce NFTs on the blockchain.
Scaling
One of the most important issues that various crypto projects are trying to solve is scaling. Without a scaling solution, it is almost impossible for crypto payment technologies to be widely adopted.
To help solve scaling issues, Nimiq partnered with Trinkler Software to come up with the Albatross Consensus Algorithm which has very promising results. It improves on the current state-of-the-art by reaching a performance close to the theoretical maximum for a single chain. It adds what they call the “Optimistic Approach” which increases speed and efficiency without sacrificing security.
Nimiq will be using Albatross as its Proof-of-Stake algorithm after switching from Proof-of-Work and this will vastly reduce energy consumption. Miners become validators that invest into the currency itself and set aside parts of their stake as security instead of investing energy into the system. This system results in a high throughput of transactions.
Nimiq 2.0 is anticipated to be capable of processing five times more transactions per second than PayPal.
Team Nimiq is also working on optimizations for Albatross such as ‘Handel’, which is a fast multi-signature aggregation protocol. New research results and developments will be added to their whitepaper accordingly.
[ THE TEAM ]
The Nimiq Team doesn’t fuck around. If John Wick is a man of focus, commitment, and sheer will, then Team Nimiq is a hardcore army of John Wicks. They are a very dedicated and high-performance team that they decided to work together in a remote jungle somewhere in Costa Rica so they can really focus and accelerate development.
Image courtesy of El Financiero
Check out their core team:
https://www.nimiq.com/team
Partnerships / Collaborations / Grants
- Trinkler Software
- WEG Bank AG / Ten31
- Trust Wallet
- Bidali
WEG/Ten31 is a German bank that caters to corporate accounts and has widened its scope by entering the crypto space and being very SELECTIVE about it’s approach. After a successful collaboration process, Nimiq partnered with WEG/Ten31 and acquired a minority stake in the bank. As a result, Nimiq has unlocked new means of interacting with the traditional financial system. OASIS is a good example because they are able to leverage the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) instant banking network through WEG/Ten31.
Combining Nimiq OASIS, WEG/Ten31, and a Decentralized Exchange like Trade Telegraph enables customers at any of the 2K+ banks in 20 EU countries that are part of the SEPA network to exchange value between crypto and fiat systems.
Nimiq received a Research Grant for Blockchain research from Stanford University's Applied Cryptography Group and a PhD Research Grant from Arthur Gervais at Imperial College’s Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering.
[ THE EXECUTION ]
As you can probably tell, working on OASIS and Albatross is a monumental undertaking and the team isn’t done. They will keep on working on continuous improvement and reach new levels of innovation.
To achieve Nimiq’s vision, they are constantly working on solving major challenges like:
- Network for establishing P2P connections
- Storage for persisting keys and blockchain data
- Cryptography for hashing, signing and verifying
- Compression of blockchain data to sync within seconds instead of hours
- Blockchain parameters optimized for the browser
- Compatibility with other blockchains
- and more!
Quantum Leap
Team Nimiq sees two driving forces behind adoption:
- Delivering usability and value incentives for average consumers in economically developed countries to switch from their familiar ways of payment
- Accessibility in countries with failing fiat currencies and financial infrastructure or a high number of unbanked people.
Here’s Nimiq’s Roadmap:
https://www.nimiq.com/roadmap
[ THE TOKENOMICS ]
As of publishing time, the circulating supply of NIM token is around 7.75 billion with a total supply of around 8.4 billion. The maximum supply will be 21B.
To allow NIM to be locked in and released at a certain time, Nimiq supports Vested Contracts as part of the protocol. To prove Nimiq’s long-term commitment, funds for team members, creators, early contributors, the Nimiq Foundation, and the Nimiq Charity Foundation are vested as described in the Nimiq Supply Distribution.
[ WHERE TO BUY NIMIQ ] (the following items are links too)
[ OUTRO ]
Nimiq is perfecting their technology and making sure their users and developers have great experience using it. They have a great idea, a great product, a great team, and so far, their execution has been on fire. They are about to unleash OASIS and Albatross. They are clearly an undervalued project. When this project takes off after being in the shadows for far too long, they will send shockwaves throughout the financial multiverse.
The question is, did you buy the $NIM dips? Or are you busy buying Shitmoons and Shita Inus at their peak prices? LOL
To get the latest Nimiq updates, check out their blog:
https://www.nimiq.com/blog
More Nimiq posts: (links below)
