A few days ago I wrote about my quest for the perfect crypto platform. Spoiler it does not exactly exist yet but Hive is pretty close.
While writing that I also mentioned the other platforms/crypto I considered good projects and potential candidates for building apps and games around. Even though Hive is the front runner in my opinion, there might be some interest in the others, which are a bit less known. So I thought maybe I'd break them down a little deeper, one by one.
Decided to start with Nimiq. I think it is probably the least known of the bunch and gets almost no attention. Which is kind of sad because they have done a pretty good job making it unique and creating a nice design for the platform.
As of writing this 1 NIM is worth about $0.0046. So if it seems even remotely interesting, there is an extremely low barrier to entry right now. Since I found it the price has gone up some but not much.
So what sets Nimiq apart? It is currently a Proof of Work crypto that is designed to run in the browser. Your wallet is actually stored inside your browser. When you join in the network on your browser you are actually running a Nimiq node that participates in consensus. This is pretty cool and to my knowledge is not done by any other project.
It can also be mined in the browser. This is not as unique. Monero and other crypto have done this for a long time. But still worth mentioning.
However, Nimiq is switching to a Proof of Stake algorithm very soon so mining will not really be a thing anymore. Most people would see this as a good thing, I'm a little mixed on it. I know the benefits of PoS generally outweigh those of PoW but I feel like PoS usually makes centralization more possible.
So what can you do with Nimiq? Surprisingly a decent amount. For such an unknown project there are quite a few cool things about it already.
In the Nimiq wallet you can actually do some exchanges. BTC is there to swap with NIM already. They are working on something called the Oasis. Their plan is to allow fiat exchanges with NIM directly in the wallet. This would be another extremely unique feature. No other wallet to my knowledge does this. You pretty much always have to use an exchange to go to fiat.
My favorite thing to do is play Nimiq Sunset Cyberspace. The game is pretty addicting. It is very simple, you avoid obstacles while collecting Nimiq logo coins. You get a NIM payout after every round that you score more than 5. This is accomplished by the developer getting ad payments, so the game does have a lot of ads. But strangely I find them mostly tolerable (I usually can't stand ads.) My high score is 56. How high can you get?
There are also other things like a faucet for new people to get started. Here is an app page to find more.
They also have a pretty nice developer set up already. So you can create javascript apps very easily. I believe the next version is actually being written in Rust. So there may be native applications eventually. Though the focus of the project is fully on web and building in-browser apps.
Not sure I'll ever personally do anything with Nimiq. Mostly because I don't want to be tied to a blockchain that has transaction fees. Even super tiny fees like Nimiq has. The future of blockchain MUST be feeless, IMO. But it certainly has some unique features I like a lot. I'll probably continue to play quick games of Sunset Cyberspace and hold my NIM, who knows what the future holds?
Thanks for reading, hope it was informative. Any questions I can try to answer but I'm not exactly a Nimiq expert. Just someone that likes the project.