An Interview with NEM Lead Core Developer Jaguar0625

First appeared on medium

One of the best things about being part of the NEM community is the talented people I’ve met and get the honor to work alongside. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be introducing you to the NEM development team in a series of interviews to celebrate the release of the Catapult (mijin v.2) Preview Beta launch. This week I interviewed Jaguar0625, who leads the incredible team of developers that are critical to shaping the future of NEM. — Alexandra

1. What’s the NEM development team like?

The development team is small but strong. BloodyRookie, gimre and I have been working together since the beginning, so we know each other pretty well by now ^^. We are pleased that the NEM Europe Centre of Excellence is hiring, and we have been very happy with the work @aleix_mp and @gsolecubilo have done on the SDKs and tooling since they joined in late 2017.

The team is special because everyone works hard and is committed to a common cause. There is a lot of collegiality, and the results are more significant than any of us could have done alone.

2. What was your original vision for Catapult? Did your vision or goals for Catapult evolve during development?

A very configurable, highly performant blockchain that is suitable for both private and public chain use cases. The vision hasn’t changed. This is what Catapult is.

The goals for Catapult haven’t changed much since inception, but development always takes longer than expected. Developers are too optimistic with estimates :). It didn’t help that hiring has taken longer than expected to ramp up.

3. What is something most people don’t realize about NEM or Catapult?

The Catapult public chain will support higher TPS than the NEM public chain (~2 TPS) but it will not natively support the 4000 TPS number that is thrown around so often. That would require much stronger nodes on average than are currently running the NEM public chain, and we don’t want to do anything that disincentivizes running nodes. The network is already relatively small, and we’d prefer to see it grow rather than shrink.

4. What kinds of features would you like NEM to have in future releases?

I cannot comment on this as features are decided jointly by the triad of core devs, Tech Bureau and NEM Foundation.

5. What are some ways the community can help NEM succeed? Is there a message you would like to give the NEM community?

Do we have a community? Aside from certain pockets, especially in Japan, it seems like the “community” is just a bunch of speculators. The fixation on price and exchange availability is deeply troubling to me.

Satoshi did not invent Bitcoin to encourage rampant speculation of digital assets. I believe his purpose was much grander than that. Cryptocurrency should not be about making a quick profit. Instead, it should be about decentralization and democratizing control. Let people — not governments or corporations — own and control their own data and financial future. Unfortunately, in the present, much of the cryptocurrency landscape has devolved into slightly veiled boiler rooms.

I would encourage anyone serious to learn what a blockchain is and how it works. Read about what decentralization means and why it is not wise to fork even when a hacker steals coins. If a central entity is deciding on when to make forks, is anything really decentralized?

On a more positive note, there certainly seems to be a good nexus of support in Japan. #nemcafe by @TrendStream and #nembar are nice initiatives to see. I appreciate @cryptoTonyNEM’s mostly fair coverage of NEM and the NEM Foundation. I’m probably forgetting some other community members who are doing a good job as well.

It should go without saying, but actually use NEM — and I don’t mean just the wallet. Pay for things in XEM and build services on top of NEM. For inspiration, look to the NEM Hackathon winners. It’s still very early in blockchain technology, so there’s a lot of opportunity.