Quarkchain – solving scalability like no other

Introduction

Bitcoin proved that it is possible to have a currency without a central government and banks controlling it, using a decentralized ledger which is stored and updated using a blockchain. Ethereum proved that a blockchain can be used not only to enable a (crypto)currency, but also for running decentralized applications (dApps) that interact with a blockchain using a smart contract (rules for interactions with a blockchain). In the near future we’ll see a massive wave of adoption for decentralized applications. In many cases, people won’t even know that they are interacting with a decentralized application (as it should be). Currently we are seeing new applications every day. One example I like a lot, is a ticketing protocol called GET that prevent “intermediaries” to buy and resell popular concert tickets at unfair prices. For these type of systems to success three fundamental things are required before true adoption can take place: decentralization (a ledger can only be trusted if many independent actors verify it), security (it should not be possible to bring down a network, or update a ledger by single or organized bad actors), and scalability (transactions should happen quickly even at very high volumes).

Scalability & Sharding

While blockchain technology is well suited for decentralization and security, scalability is a real challenge and poses a big issue currently for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Both platforms are only able to withstand a couple of transaction per second, leading to large congestions and steep increases in transaction fees. Bitcoin and Ethereum are trying to ameliorate this scalability issue be updating their design with off-chain transactions (e.g. lightning network) and sharding (breaking a ledger into smaller pieces). Trying to redesign and upgrade a car when its driving on a highway, takes much more time, however, than designing and constructing a platform with massive scalability taken into account from the get go. And the latter is exactly what Quarkchain does. Creating a new platform for cryptocurrencies and smart contracts with massive scalability as one of its fundamental properties.

On its testnet, Quarkchain already achieves over 2000 transactions per second (tps), and the ambition is to achieve over 1 million tps within approximately a year. Quarkchain is able to achieve such high performance through its unique application of sharding. Unlike Ethereum sharding proposal, Quarkchain also tackles the problem of cross-shard transactions. And on top of that the Quarkchain ensures that the platform users don’t have to worry about tokens or smart contracts being located on different shards, as this is all handled by Quarkchain’s own Smart Wallet. This really is what sets Quarkchain apart from other high-performance blockchains, even from Zilliqua which also used sharding to achieve high throughput.

Horizontal Scaling and Node Clustering

One underexposed aspect of Quarkchain is that it will allow regular pc’s and possible also mobile devices to cluster together into a “super-full node”.

Super or master nodes, in general, verify transactions of a blockchain. The owners of these super nodes are rewarded platform tokens, for delivering computing power to the network. Super nodes typically require expensive hardware, and a large amount of tokens locked up. Such an approach leads to a more centralized network, with only companies and wealthy people being able profit from network rewards. Quarkchain, instead, will allow less expensive hardware to work together as a super node and share the rewards - sort of like the SETI@home project for those who remember it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home). This will provide greater decentralization and improve the throughput of the system, as with sharding the maximum throughput increases with the number of super nodes participating in the network.

Status, Roadmap, and Team

The Quarkchain platform is currently in development, with a Testnet deployed. The source code, residing in a private Github repository, has been positively reviewed by Andre Cronje, a respectable blockchain expert (https://cryptobriefing.com/quarkchain-code-review-deep-dive/). In his own words “I think their implementation is novel, well executed, and I am definitely going to be playing around a lot more in their Testnet. It annoys me that I haven’t been able to break it yet.”. Very soon the Testnet will also include smart contracts, and the Mainnet will launch before the end of this year.

The delivery of the roadmap and the success of the platform mainly depend on the strength and the balance of the team behind it. And the team behind Quarkchain, led by Qi Zhou PhD (Expert in high-performant systems), is as good as it gets in this stage of development. Also its advisory team is excellent (https://steemit.com/blockchain/@dutchdeliverance/quarkchain-advisory-team-review-excellent-choice-and-i-ll-explain-why).

Read more on Quarkchain’s official website: https://quarkchain.io/

And as always, be careful and do your own research!