ICO review: QuarkChain

Token Metrics
Project: QuarkChain
Token symbol: QKC
Hard cap: $20 million
Price: 1 QKC = 0.0229 USD (0.00003 ETH)
ERC20 token: Yes
Countries excluded: Cuba, North Korea, Serbia, Tunisia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Congo, South Sudan, Sudan (north), Sudan (Darfur), Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela, Canada, USA, China, and New Zealand.
KYC: Is live now (DEADLINE: May 20th 11:59:59AM PST)

1. To start, find and start a private conversation with QuarkChainKYCBot (@ quark_kyc_bot) in Telegram. (@ quark_kyc_bot or mentioning QuarkChainKYCBot in the community group will NOT do anything.)
2. You will get a SECRET access code. DO NOT share your access code UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE (even to admins)! Otherwise other people may use the code and you may lose your chance to participate.
3. The bot will provide the link and you can follow it to start the KYC process.

Token distribution:

Project Solution
QuarkChain goal is to build a throughput of a safe, decentralized and scalable blockchain that can ultimately handle millions of transactions per second, heading to meet the global scale of application technology. With their current testnet result of over 2000 tx/s, their next target is to deliver 10,000 tx/s with the testnet version 0.2 or mainnet launch on Q4 2018 - shortly after the public token sale.

Features of this project:

1. The Sharding two-layered blockchain: Quarkchain consists of two layers of blockchains. The team applies elastic sharding blockchains (shards) as the first layer to process the transactions acting as a ledger, and a root blockchain as the second layer that confirms the blocks from the first layer. The second layer that confirms the blocks from the first layer is configurable to be adjusted as needed without changing the root layer.

1. Guaranteed security by market-driven collaborative mining: Another unique feature of QuarkChain is the ability to offer guaranteed security through market-driven collaborative mining. Essentially, this means that 50% of the network’s hash power is devoted to the root blockchain to specifically prevent double spending attacks since the hackers would need 50%*50%=25% total hash power of the network to perfrom one.

The QuarkChain project combines both Proof-of-Work (PoW) and ASIC-resistant PoW concepts. The root chain layer achieves consensus via PoW with each sharded blockchain following a “root chain first” consensus to deal with forks. And thanks to the two-layered system, any advisor wanting to revert transactions would need to first revert transactions (or block headers) on the root+chain in the second layer which is a waste of time and effort.

1. Horizontal scalability and GPU mining support which enhances decentralization: In any high-throughput blockchain network, running a super-full node can be extremely expensive because of the high requirement on CPU, storage, memory and network bandwidth which encourages centralization since only powerful parties like giant tech firms could use their workstation in data centers to do so. In contrast, QuarkChain allows multiple cheap nodes forming a cluster to replace a super-full node. Each node in the cluster only validates a sub-set of the chains eliminating the chance of any single miner of it taking the roles of full nodes. Then, all the nodes band together to share what they’ve validated complete the puzzle of all transaction having taking place throughout the network.

1. Efficient cross-shard transactions: Cross-shard transactions in QuarkChain can be issued at any time, and confirmed in minutes. The speed of cross-shard transactions increases linearly as the number of shards increases.

1. Smart Contracts: QuarkChain supports smart contracts with the use of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), sharded blockchains therefore run their own smart contracts connected to their blockchain via EVM. Yet, with each shared blockchain, you have 1 wallet accordingly, leading to a pain point of managing all of them. That's why they came up with the “simple account management" feature allowing users to use one single Primary account to manage all addresses in all shards and interact with them all seamlessly.

Additionally, the team provides users with a smart wallet application automatically performing both type of transactions (in-shard and cross-shard) for a user without bothering him/her. This wallet has 2 levels - primary account and secondary account. The primary account is the address of the user in a default shard, while the secondary account manages the rest addresses of the user in the rest shards.

If you are an IT guy wanting to invest in this project, I highly recommend you participate in their testnet bounty - It's a win-win situation where you can experience their network to examine it with your technology knowledge before spending any money on it and at the same time get rewards for doing so.

For now, you can have a look at this video containing a live testnet demo:

Token Information
QuarkChain has its own tokens named QKS - an ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, which will be later swapped on their mainet launch in Quarter 4, 2018. The QKS token is used as a carrier of value, a transactional currency, and as a contribution reward.

Team

QuarkChain is led by Qi Zhou (Founder), an expert in high-performance systems and a former Google employee with 15+ years of development experience holding a PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Other key members of the QuarkChain team include ZhaoGuang Wang (Senior Software Engineer), Ting Du (CMO for China), Anthurine Xiang (CMO), and Kyle Wang (COO).

ICO rating sites:

If you The QuarkChain got quite a recognition from many sources, not only from popular ICO rating website such as ICO Drops (They event got the score of “Very High Interest, specifically with a rating “very high" on ROI rate and a “Low" record of Risk rate) but also from investment lists made by famous investors like Ian Balina or Tom H.Chase.

My thought:
Just like other blockchain network project (EOS, Zilliqa, Kaneda,...), the QuarkChain itself has a great potential: all of them have taken giant growth during ICO and especially after listed on exchangs for awhile, not to mention that QuarkChain has already had promising testnet result and their mainnet deployment is right after their public token sale. (Look at EOS's price these days when it comes close to their mainnet launch in June).

Moreover, I do like their KYC process which is really filtering and strictly difficult to sneak in if you're not qualified enough.

So it's like this: each person with KYC-passed profile will be then assessed based on a 100-point scale, regarding 3 aspects:

a. The earliest timestamp when a participant joined any of the following Telegram groups (QuarkChain Community, Quarkchain-官方中文社区, QuarkChain News) (30%) - cutoff date: May 4th 11:59:59AM PST

b. A quiz on your understanding of the product (50%)

c. A submission of your contribution to the project (20%) - cutoff date for contribution: May 15 11:59:59AM PST

People with score is equal to or greater than 60 will be eligible to enter a lottery to whitelist them. Have a look at this article for the process detail (It's quite interesting to me, I hope you too). This process might give higher personal cap since it's strict and fewer people could pass the process which does not only prevent cheaters from gaming the system by submitting many low score profile but also favor early contributors as well as ones with due diligence study on the project before investing.

Besides, the Marketing team works well with the community establishment, especially their Telegram and Twitter channels. In the most recent weekly update, their twitter account has already got to more than 11k followers meanwhile the number of community members in Telegram Group has been skyrocketing with more than 70,000 members currently.

They also have a weekly Q&A section on Saturday at 7-8 PM PST for spreading better project understanding.

For more information about the ICO, please visit the following links:

Website: https://www.quarkchain.io/

White paper: https://www.quarkchain.io/QUARK%20CHAIN%20Public%20Version%200.3.2.pdf

Telegram: https://t.me/quarkchainio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quark_Chain

Weibo: http://weibo.com/QuarkChain

• The information contained in this article is for informational purpose only and not financial advice. Do your own research before making any investment decisions.

Author's info:
Bitcointalk username: dadumtuss123
Telegram: @quanghuy96
Email: [email protected]