NEM Holdings, the not-for-profit holding company of NEM Ventures, and the NEM Foundation have announced the creation of NEM Studios, a dedicated strategy and backend development unit to support the ongoing development of Catapult - the next generation of the NEM protocol planned for release later in 2019.
The mission of NEM Studios is to assist in the delivery of a high speed, configurable and scalable blockchain solution to enterprises across the globe. As a part of the NEM Holdings group, with development activities funded directly by NEM Core, NEM Studios will be responsible for the recruitment of an experienced CTO and a team of developers who will assist with the development of the Catapult Core protocol and API layer. The CTO will work in a matrix with the NEM Foundation supporting the continued development of client tools and supporting technologies to make enterprise adoption smoother.
NEM Studios will be led by David Shaw, who will serve as Director. NEM Studios will be contracted by the NEM Foundation under the newly introduced service provider model to deliver the go-to-market strategy for Catapult in advance of its launch later in 2019. A steering committee will lead the go-to-market strategy and comprise of David Shaw, Alexandra Tinsman, and Nate D’Amico.
Shaw, who also serves as Chair and Trustee of NEM Holdings and Chair of the Investment Committee for NEM Ventures, said: “We are thrilled to be creating a dedicated team to bring Catapult to life this year and support its development into the future. We will be looking to recruit the best in the business, with deep technology experience, and look forward to creating a more effective and scalable ecosystem for our community.”
Under the guidance of NEM Studios and the NEM Foundation, Catapult will become the core NEM engine, powering both private and public blockchains. Features will include unique smart contract plug-ins to enable a wide range of capabilities such as digital asset creation, decentralized swaps, advanced account systems, and business logic modeling.
Alexandra Tinsman, President of the NEM Foundation, said: "NEM Studios will be focused on creating a more user-friendly network that is built with the end user in mind. Our collaboration with Nem Studios proves our commitment to creating a blockchain that can be leveraged across industries and scaled globally.”
We look forward to contributing to the ecosystem as NEM makes the final push towards the public release of Catapult later this year. The NEM Studios team would also like to thank NEM Core and the NEM Foundation for their ongoing support. - NEM Studios team
About NEM Holdings
NEM Holdings is a company limited by guarantee, with one member, the NEM Community Trust. It is primarily a governance layer with a Board of Directors responsible for ensuring subsidiary companies operate within their mandate but with little operational activities.
While NEM Holdings is the overarching holding company set up to support NEM Ventures governance initially, it will also be used as a vehicle to support the wider NEM ecosystem.
About the NEM Foundation
The NEM Foundation aims to introduce, educate, and promote the use of the NEM blockchain technology platform on an international scale to all industries and institutions. The NEM Foundation does this by adding partner support, contributing code and tools to the platform, and providing education and training to grow the ecosystem.
NEM is built from scratch as a powerful platform for application developers of all kinds, and the NEM blockchain is designed to be the plug-and-play business blockchain.
For more information, visit https://nem.io
About NEM Ventures
NEM Ventures is the venture capital and investments arm of the NEM blockchain ecosystem. Specialising in high tech investments, NEM Ventures promotes the growth of the ecosystem through strategic investments in projects which align with the ethos of the NEM community. NEM Ventures was mandated by the community in a public vote to manage a pool of reserved funds to meet these aims.
NEM Ventures focuses on projects which demonstrate a truly differentiated product, the ability to generate positive net income in the medium term, and founders who showcase the desire to move the blockchain ecosystem forward. Founded in 2018, NEM Ventures is a relatively new member of the NEM ecosystem and comprises a small, highly motivated team of investment and technology professionals.