What I am trying to ask, I suppose, is: is NEM more than just a good feeling people have in their gut?
As a stakeholder, I'm ambivalent.
They have a 400 page megathread with no client, no logo, and a promise of Proof of Importance and a handful nebulous, unannounced 2.0 features. There's a frequent refrain of "great community!" which, as a big fan of Nxt, I find mildly grating. Nxt has a great community; NEM has a spreadsheet of stakeholders.
NEM appeals to people (me included) that probably feel disenfranchised to some degree... we didn't get in on BTC or LTC when it was pocket change. We don't have monster ASICs or rigs to jump in on a coin launch and pump/dump. We mostly can't code in Java/C#/whatever with hopes of grabbing a nice developer slice/stake. NEM promises, and it seems reasonable, that normal folks will have a chance to get in on the ground floor and allow them to participate in something that can grow, long term (or even explode). For that, I think UtopianFuture has done a great job, and I really applaud him for his egalitarian approach.
Lunacy creeps in when folks stay put in one thread and don't get enough sunlight and oxygen. Real, unmitigated moon bat stuff like NEM is going to launch with a market cap matching NXT. I don't think many NEM folk get out and see the effort the Nxt crowd put in. Simply grabbing a free stake and bleating "great community!" doesn't grant a coin a #5 spot. Busting your ass and developing services on top of a solid core does that (I'm looking at you, jl777 and CIYAM!)
NEM could have a mini Aurora/Darkcoin effect thanks to the AE... when NEM gets listed, you might get some of panic buys happening with a lot of action. At some point, NEM is going to have to come back down to earth when people ask "what's the differentiator?"
73 people or 3000, it's inconsequential. Fair distribution isn't a feature. The pareto principle will always kick in.
PoI and what else? Who knows. Gimre, jaguar, Utopian, a few others. Time will tell.
Bottom line... I have faith that NEM will launch a solid client, and there will be a core of enthusiastic supporters that will propel it forward and make it a success. I think it's going to be a much slower haul than most of the "great community!" folks think.
I remember the first corporate meeting I attended and it was this middle management meeting that just droned, and droned and DRONED incessantly. My Director of Marketing stood up and said "you know, Rome wasn't built on middle management meetings, it was built on slitting throats." He grabbed his team and we left, the rest of the room with their jaws on the floor. It was rude, it was abrupt, and it was fucking GREAT.
Can NEM slit throats? Wishes and daydreams won't make it happen. The NEM crowd will have to get their hands bloody. I don't see many stepping up except for the usual 'let's get a SWARM started' type thing. It's hard to build services without a client, so as much as I kind of wail unfairly on the NEM crowd, their hands are tied. They can't build services on top of a google spreadsheet.
We'll know more in a month. Client launch, bloody hands... should be fun.
