Quarkchain is a highly scalable decentralized, secure public(permissionless) blockchain that uses PoW(proof-of-work) mechanism.
As blockchain receives more attention from the masses and institutional investors, we start facing issues that stay in the way of the implementation and adoption of the technology. Most importantly, I want to focus on an issue that has been discussed a lot lately- scalability. That is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome before we achieve widely spread adoption by businesses and/or institutions. Think of Alipay or Visa and the number of transactions they can complete in order to meet the demand of their customers. There are 3 main challenges that we as users face- decentralization, security and scalability. Normally, one has to make a compromise and choose just 2 out of these 3. A good example of that will be Ethereum and the congestion of the network that happened in late 2017 thanks to the notorious Cryptokitties. There is a reason why blockchain projects(ICOs) have done so well- the technology still lacks behind the idea and we need better infrastructure in order to change the current financial system for better.
Quarkchain essentially does this- it offers a highly scalable blockchain that can meet the global commercial demand/standard without compromising on security or decentralization.
The main features of QuarkChain are:
Reshardable two-layered blockchain-Quarkchain consists of 2 layers. The first one offers elastic sharding (a type of database partitioning that separates very large databases the into smaller, faster and easily managed parts called data shards). The second layer-also known as root blockchain- confirms the transactions (blocks) of the first layer. The second layer can also be resharded as needed without changing the root layer
Guaranteed security by market- driven collaborative mining-basically, to ensure the security of all transactions at least 50% of the overall hash power is allocated to the root blockchain preventing double spending attacks. This means that there will be collaborative mining (incentive mechanism) included.
Anti-centralized horizontal scalability- Quarkchain allows multiple cheap nodes that form a cluster to replace a super full node (that can be very pricey).
Efficient cross-shard transactions. Two types of transactions: in-shard and cross-shard. In-shard transactions -when the input and the output addresses of the transaction are in the same shard. Cross-shard-when the input and output addresses are in different shards. The cross-shard transactions can be issued at any given moment and confirmed within minutes. The speed of the cross-shard transaction increases as the number of shards increases.
️Simple account management- only 1 account needed for the all the blockchains(shards) in Quarkchain. All cryptocurrencies from different shards are stored in one smart wallet. A user will be able to manage all addresses in all shards via a single private key.
Quarkchain will support smart contracts via EVM. Most of the existing DApps that are built on top of EVM can be directly deployed on Quarckchain. To utilize high-scalability, Quarkchain will provide additional scalability-aware interface.
Token Utility: QKS-interim ERC-20 tokens are issued that will be later converted to Quarkchain’s native token once the mainnet launches in Q4 2018. The QKS token can be used as value carrier, transaction currency and contribution reward. QKS will be mineable hence providing a reward to the miners.
To sum it up: Quarkchain is aiming to improve the current blockchain space by significantly increasing the TPS (transactions per second) to a million per second. This will provide a free of congestion affordable network that will serve different purposes and help for the adoption by big industries and businesses. Quarkchain also incentivizes weak miners that don’t have to join mining pools in order to participate in the network. The big picture includes a seamless platform that supports distributed social media, high frequency tra, integration of DApps on mobile phones(DApps2go) and financial payments
2.Team and Advisors
Team of 10 members with 6 advisors.
I like the team. I believe it comes with solid academic and working credentials. Not everybody from the team is full time on the project and they don’t have extremely rich blockchain experience, however the presence of MVP gives me a lot of confidence in the quality and dedication involved. Some of the team members have worked together at Dell and Demo++, while others have experience in internationally recognized companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. The advisors include long-time VC investors and successful entrepreneurs:
Founder, Qi Zhou, Education: Mathematics at Beijin University(BUPT-ranked 201–250 in the world), M.S. Computer Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University(62nd World). Software engineer and expert in high performance systems. Experience as soft engineer at Google (9m), DELL EMC (~2y) and most recently at Facebook (1y-until March 2018). Full time on the project. Easily an all-star with his academic and professional background
Software Engineer: Zhaoguang Wang, Education: Soft Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Master’s of Comp Science&Engineering at University of Michigan (21st World). Expert in large scale distributed systems. Worked as a research assistant at University of Michigan for 1y, Senior soft engineer at Google (5y- until Jan 2017), Instagram and currently at Facebook. Great work credentials.
Research Scientist Team:
Xiaoli Ma, Education: Automation at Tsinghua University (25th World), Ph.D. Electrical Engineering at University of Minnesota(163rd World). Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology (70th Wolrd) for 4 years. Currently Professor, IEEE fellow at the same university since 2014. Co-founder of Ratrix Technologies-technology to maximize data throughput and spectral efficiency of wireless communication systems.
Yaodong Yang, Education: Bachelor’s Engineering at Zhejiang University(87th World), Ph.D. Engineering at Virginia Tech(367th World). Work experience includes Research Assistant at Virginia Tech for 4years. Currently professor at Xi’an University (since 2011). Co-founder of Demo++(startup incubator-not much found).
Wencen Wu, Education: Ph.D. Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Expert in model simulation and verification in distributed autonomous systems. Currently working as an Assistant Professor at Renselaer Polytechnic Institute (since 2013).
Rest of the team highlights:
Marketing&Community: Graduate from SJTU & JHU; Consumer marketing and analytics at LinkedIn(1y), Lead Platform Analytics at Wish(big shopping mobile app).
Bizz Development&Eco-system: Founder of Demo ++, incubated Ink; Dedicated on Blockchain productization and business development.
Operation: Founder and CEO of multiple international companies. Couldn’t find LinkedIn or extra info on the site.
Community Manager: Founder of investment firm, 3 years of experience in financial investment. Crypto media writer. No LinkedIn found nor extra info on the site.
Social Media Broadcasting: Intern at EY as Assurance Auditor. Shanghai Branch Manager at RoboTerra inc (AI robotics company, that received 4.2 million USD in seed funding) for 2 years.
Advisors:
Wang Leo-founder and CEO of PreAngel, a Beijing-based investment fund focused on early-stage internet and blockchain startups. Lijie has invested over €150 million in nearly 300 technology start-ups in Asia and the USA. Wang started with mobile apps but now blockchain is his main focus. NEO’s first investor in China.
Bill Moore-President at DELL EMC (2014–2016), Engineer at Sun Microsystems from 2003 to 2010,(acquired by Oracle). Currently Partner/Managing director of Walden International (huge VC).
Mike Miller-Ph.D., Yale University(top), Research Assistant Professor at Affiliate Professor (present) at University of Washington (61st World) for about 10 years. Founder of Cloudant (later acquired by IBM). Cloudant was providing a distributed database-as-a-service that scales and manages the databases of web and mobile app developers and received 16.3 millions (as per Crunchbase) USD seed funding.
Kevin Hsu- rich experience in investment and has invested over 60 blockchain companies around the world.
Arun Phadke-University Distinguished Professor, Virginia Tech; Fellow of National Academy of Engineering, USA.
Zhiyun Qian: Intert at Microsoft and Cisco. Research Staff Member at NEC Laboratories America and currently Assistant Professor at University of California, Riverside.
3.Token Metrics:
4.Verdict:
Strong team and advisory board
New blockchains tend to perform really well in the ICO world
Positive MVP feedback from known tech experts in the crypto community, who have tested the alpha/github
Minuses:
1 million TPS seems like a tall order at the moment
No major partnerships have been announced yet
Strong competition- most notably Zilliqa, Ethereum, Fusion and more
Lack of technical whitepaper. I believe the current whitepaper is a bit basic and vague when it goes down to the technology used
Overall, I am really excited about the project. Missing information needs to be added by the team soon, I would have liked to see some partnerships announced and more details about the token metrics/collaborators, but that’s coming in the near future anyway. The 1 million TPS claim also concerns me to some extend, despite the MVP and the good team. Blockchain projects tend to perform really well, just think of another highly scalable platform like Zilliqa.
Quarckchain comes with a strong team and a reasonable hardcap of 20 million USD. On top of that- unlike some recent projects such as OneLedger and pChain, Quarkchain already has a working MVP and a public testnet expected in May. As I mentioned previously, scalability is one of the key issues that stays in the way of mass adoption of the blockchain technology. Finding a project that doesn’t compromise high-throughput for security or decentralization is a big plus. It’s a very competitive space they are entering and the market conditions are shaky, however I will be following the project closely and I am definitely bullish on it.
