The Quarkchain ICO is surrounded with huge hype. Come as no surprise since they are willing to implement the lately so famous technology, called "sharding", moreover their marketing team is A+. Getting on their whitelist is complicated, but it prevents the project from quick gainers.
What's the promise?
It's been already mentioned in the previous analyses of ours, that the current blokchain's biggest disadvantage is the scalability issue. TPS (transaction per secundum) cannot be increased neither on the Bitcoin chain nor on the Ethereum chain. Remember, how slow and expensive a transaction was back in December 2017 (peak time of Bitcoin – for now) with the increasing popularity of the technology at the same time. Of course, half-solutions are out there like the increased block capacity or the Lightning Network. However, the increased block capacity is just temporary solution and the Lightning Network transactions are hidden from the blockchain – they are losing their blockchain characteristics – and the usage is also complicated.
Quarkchain’s promise is a scalable blockchain which uses the sharding technology (like Zilliqa, but from a different approach). Some statistics to visualise what this is all about: Bitcoin's Tps is 3-4, Ethereum's is 15-20, while Quarkchain's plan is 100.000+ Tps. Twice as much as Visa's system is capable of. If the mass adaptation of cryptos happen, this chain would still be able to deliver quick and cheap transactions.
Technology
Quarkchain is a two-layered blokchain, one layer is the root and the other one is the shard. Let's take a closer look, how it will work.
The classical blockchain functions splitted between the two layers. Shards are smaller groups, which validate transactions separately, at the same time. The more nodes join the Quarkchain, the more shards they can form. As a result, more and more transactions can be validated parallel.
Root chain is responsible for block validation. This is how the system avoids fake blocks and grant irrevocability. Both layers use the proof-of-work consensus. Quarkchain also implement smart contract solution, the smart contract solution of Ethereum, the Solidity. This might be a huge advantage of Quarkchain to attract Ethereum developers.
Advantages
Of course, the most important advantage is the scalability. Moreover, Quarkchain allows honest nodes to form a cluster running as a super-full node, which helps Quark to remain a real decentralized chain. We must mention the team's experience which they gained at the most famous tech giants like Facebook or Google.
Disadvantages
Lately, it seems that sharding is the technology that solves the scalability issue. However, not only Quarkchain is working on the implementation of it, but Ethereum and Zilliqa as well. Ethereum has a huge advantage with its adaptation, but they need to modify an existing technology which is always a harder task, than building something new and it seems that they are just in the planning phase of the implementation.
Zilliqa is already running a public testnet, but they are in a quarter delay compared to their original roadmap. The mainnet release is scheduled in Q3 2018 which is still ahead of Quarkchain's plan. Of course, all projects can be successful at the same time.
The technology must be examined from security perspective, i.e. how many percent malicious nodes need to attack the chain.
Token Sale
During the private sale phase they collected 16M USD, further 4M USD is the goal on the public token sale. That is 20M USD. For your info, Zilliqa has 1,2B market cap when I am writing this article. The surrounding hype is clearly demonstrated how hard it is to get whitelisted. You must reach at least 60 points in the registration procedure which has three stages. First, when did you join their TG group. Second, a quiz about the project. Third, if you do not reach the 60 points with the previous two stages, you can promote the project (create content, articles, videos). What if you reached the minimum point requirement? You just need some luck, to be selected in the lottery.
Very well organised ICO, huge hype, only 25% bonus for the private investors, the 20M hard cap is low (compared to the ongoing tendencies).
Roadmap
Public mainnet to be released in Q4 2018 and the smart contract support arrives in one year from now.
Team
Asian team, with strong programming background, the founder and the lead-developer gained experience at tech giants like Facebook or Google.
A few more words on the ICO registration
This might be the most complex ICO registration procedure, ever! Let's see step-by-step:
• Join their TG group (marketing works, more than 85K members)
• Chat with the bot, ask for the KYC code
• Do the KYC
• Fill in a quiz
• If you haven't reached 60 points, create content
• If you have enough points, hope that you get selected in the lottery.
• If you were selected, you can buy tokens
Sources
WhitePaper: https://quarkchain.io/QUARK%20CHAIN%20Public%20Version%200.3.4.pdf
Website: https://quarkchain.io