QuarkChain is a blockchain that claims to offer 1 million on-chain transactions per second. Find out how it works today in our review.
QuarkChain, found online at QuarkChain.io, is a blockchain project based around the idea of shards, sub-chains, and root-chains. The project first appeared online in February 2018.
An ICO for the platform’s QKS tokens will take place in May 2018. Meanwhile, the company is preparing to launch the first version of their blockchain by Q4 2018.
In an introductory video, QuarkChain describes itself as “a highly scalable, decentralized, secure, public, permissionless blockchain.” The goal of the blockchain is to push the industry forward by delivering enhanced transactional capacity.
Let’s take a closer look at how QuarkChain works.
QuarkChain offers a highly-scalable blockchain that claims to be able to process 1 million on-chain transactions per second.
QuarkChain achieves better scalability using a two layer structure. The first layer offers elastic sharding, which is a type of database partitioning that separates very large databases into smaller, faster, and easily managed components called data shards. Data shards are a key part of the QuarkChain project.
The second layer, meanwhile, is known as the root blockchain. This is the component that confirms the transactions (the blocks) pushed by the first layer. The second layer of QuarkChain can be “resharded” as needed without changing the root layer.
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. Furthermore, multiple cheaper, low-resource nodes can form a cluster to create a super node.
QuarkChain will also offer efficient cross-shard transactions in two varieties, including in-shard and cross-shard transactions. In-shard transactions occur when the input and output addresses of the transaction are in the same shard, while cross-shard transactions occur when the input and output addresses are in different shards. Cross-shard transactions can be issued at any moment and confirmed within minutes. As the number of shards increases, the speed of the cross-shard transactions will also increase.
Finally, users will interact with the QuarkChain blockchain through a simple account dashboard. That dashboard will allow you to view all cryptocurrencies from different blockchains – i.e. different shards – from one wallet screen. Plus, you can manage all addresses using a single private key.
QuarkChain will also support smart contracts. In fact, the blockchain specifically supports smart contracts running within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which means developers can directly deploy their smart contracts to QuarkChain.
The end result of all of these technologies is that QuarkChain has 8 minor blockchains with a target block time of 10 seconds along with a root blockchain with a target block time of 150 seconds.
QuarkChain has its own tokens called QKS. They’re ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
When QuarkChain launches in Q4 2018, your QKS tokens on the Ethereum blockchain will be converted to QKS tokens on the QuarkChain blockchain.
At launch, the QKS token will be able to be used as a storer of value, a transactional currency, and as a contribution reward. QKS will also be mineable (remember, QuarkChain is a PoW blockchain).
Why do we need a solution like QuarkChain? What problems aren’t being solved by today’s blockchains? The QuarkChain whitepaper identifies all of the following problems with today’s blockchains:
Security Issues: Blockchains are subject to security issues. The QuarkChain whitepaper only really mentions one security issue, and that’s a 51% attack. However, 51% attacks can certainly be a security issue for smaller blockchains.
Decentralization: Bitcoin and other blockchains were designed to be totally decentralized, with every node having one vote, and nobody controlling all the nodes. In reality, we’ve seen the formation of mining pools and other collective groups, organizing nodes into voting blocs. This is threatening the decentralized nature of bitcoin.
Scalability: Blockchains like bitcoin are struggling to scale. As transactional capacity increases, the size of the blockchain grows, leading to larger requirements for storage, bandwidth, and computing power.
Lightning Network: The QuarkChain whitepaper specifically mentions the Lightning Network as a problem with current blockchains. They reiterate the most common criticisms of Lightning Network – it introduces centralized payment processing to a decentralized blockchain, threatening the future of bitcoin as a decentralized payment solution.
QuarkChain has a node that validates all minor blocks and root chain blocks. This is called the super-full node. Running a super-full node on your own would be costly. That’s why QuarkChain came up with an innovative solution: they allow multiple smaller nodes to group together in a cluster and run as a super-full node. Each node in the cluster only validates a sub-set of chains, and the rest of the nodes are still able to fully validate any blocks even if one node fails.
QuarkChain will offer two types of transactions, including in-shard and cross-shard transactions. Any users can issue cross-shard transactions at any time. Cross-shard transactions can be confirmed within minutes.
QuarkChain allows cross-chain transactions because it maintains only one root chain. The root chain facilitates token transactions from another chain using an adapter. Then, the blockchain performs the transaction like a cross-shard transaction from the QuarkChain side.
QuarkChain will have a smart wallet that will have two levels, including your 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.
QuarkChain is led by Qi Zhou (Founder), an expert in high-performance systems and a former Google employee with 15+ years of development experience. He also holds a PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Other listed members of the QuarkChain team include ZhaoGuang Wang (Senior Software Engineer), Ting Du (CMO for China), Anthurine Xiang (CMO), and Kyle Wang (COO).
The team began researching QuarkChain in 2017, then launched their whitepaper online in February 2018. The goal is to launch the QuarkChain Core 1.0, Mainnet 1.0, and SmartWallet 1.0 by the end of Q4 2018.
QuarkChain is a blockchain that aims to offer 1 million transactions per second. It solves various problems with today’s blockchains – including excessive centralization, poor scalability, and ssecurity risks – using a unique system of quarks, sub-chains, and root-chains.