After around one year’s constant design, development, and test, the QuarkChain Mainnet Singularity V1.0 will be officially launched on April 30, 2019 (UTC+0800). Mainnet Singularity will finish what Ethereum 2.0 plans to achieve ahead of time and will be the world’s first blockchain project that fully implemented state sharding technology.
The launch of Mainnet 1.0 marks a brand new start for QuarkChain. A shining blockchain world will open here. QuarkChain’s solid technical features will demonstrate in this mainnet. Developers and users from the community are able to blend in QuarkChain’s ecosystem universe. QuarkChain will be one of the first public chains which successfully implements high throughput sharding functions in the world. In addition, QuarkChain so far is the only public chain looking into supporting various consensus algorithms, multiple virtual machines, and multi-native tokens. These features enhance the scalability while ensuring security and decentralization. Compared with the existing one, QuarkChain network is going to be more efficient, user-friendly, and suitable for the future blockchain world where massive adoptions, frequent transactions, efficient certification, and even vertical and personalized needs are required. State sharding technology is applied to greatly increase the capacity and also enhance the adaptability to various application cases.
Since hash power is limited at the early stage of QuarkChain Mainnet, “Guardian Plan” will be launched to protect all community members’ interest and guarantee the security of Mainnet with enough hash power. QuarkChain is relying on “Guardian Plan” to provide hash power protection for Mainnet Singularity. Mining rewards will be distributed to the “Guardian Plan” participants. Please follow us to learn about further details of this plan.
Mainnet Singularity V1.0 Live Time
April 30, 2019 UTC+0800 TIME
The mainnet development will be accomplished on the product roadmap at the end of March. In order to guarantee the security of the mainnet and the Guardian Plan which will be providing sufficient hash power for QuarkChain network, we plan to reserve one month to push on further development-related work.
Mainnet Features
Main Features of Mainnet Singularity v1.0
QuarkChain mainnet development started after debuting listing of QKC on Binance at June. Mainnet 1.0 remains the shortest development duration among the same type of public chains. QuarkChain not only fulfills the promised functions in the whitepaper but also adds some new features to Mainnet 1.0, such as highly efficient PoSW consensus algorithm which enables QuarkChain network to be more decentralized, scalable, and flexible.
State Sharding Support
The launch of QuarkChain Mainnet V1.0 marks the implementation of state sharding, which is the most challenging and valuable among all sharding technologies. State sharding means the different ledger state can be stored on different shards. Full data on the whole network is available on the entire cluster. The QuarkChain mainnet maintains high efficiency by enabling more storage space and computing resources to be saved in each node on shards. Developers, users, and miners will be blended in a more flexible and scalable QuarkChain network.
Boson Consensus and Hashpower Reuse Technique
Boson consensus is exclusively proposed by QuarkChain. It is not a single consensus algorithm, but rather a class of consensus algorithms. Simply speaking, Boson consensus can independently set different consensus and payback algorithms on different shards. A single blockchain is able to support various consensus algorithms. Afterward, a hash power adjustment mechanism is set up, which allows the hash power to be flexibly distributed among the shards. The hashpower reuse technique protects the newly added shards by the hash power of the root chain immediately, achieving the higher scalability of the whole system without sacrificing the security and decentralization.
Efficient and Secure Cross-Shard Transactions
QuarkChain network relies on its unique, highly efficient, and secured cross-shard transactions. QuarkChain technically guarantees atomicity of cross-shard transactions. That means a secure cross-shard transaction will be executed completely without accidental asset loss. More importantly, the security of all cross-shard transactions will be guaranteed by the root chain with Boson consensus algorithm, which enables the cross-shard transactions to enjoy the same security level as transactions among shards. In addition, with the increase of the number of the shards, the throughput of QuarkChain will rise as well. To prevent the transactions from concentrating in one shard (hot-shard), dynamical gas marketplace adjustment mechanisms are applied. This successfully solves the hot-shard issue in blockchains.
Multi-Native-Tokens Support
The existing mainstream blockchain systems fail to support multi-tokens ecosystem. To solve this, QuarkChain implements multi-native-tokens structure. Any user is able to create native tokens as long as the user pays sufficient gas represented by existing native tokens. A user could use a single-step payment to transfer any native token and complete the rest of transactions (services) atomically, without the occurrence of a situation similar to “paying ETH as a GAS fee for ERC 20 transaction.” This more efficient and flexible design concept has been highly recognized by many QuarkChain ecosystem partners and DApp developers.
Token Economics
QuarkChain’s total token supply will remain fixed 10 Billion. The circulation supply of mining rewards is nearly 246 million QKC in the first year of mainnet launched. There will be a decrease in output every year. The annual output will be only 88% of the previous year. 8 shards are available after the mainnet launched and one shard is allowed to be dynamically added each year.
According to the mainnet design, the average duration of a block on each shard is 10s and 60s on root chain. Initial ledger rewards on shards equal basic rewards (3.25 QKC) plus GAS fee paid for the transactions. The GAS fee calculation is very similar to that of Ethereum. QuarkChain’s implementation of state sharding solution enables its network to be congestion free and GAS fee is also free from a sharp increase. The multi-native tokens support allows the payment of GAS fee to be more flexible.
Initial ledger rewards on root chain equal basic rewards (156 QKC) plus the number of sharded block headers. For example, if a root chain block contains 48 sharded block headers, that is, each shard has an average of 6 headers. The ledger rewards on this root chain block should be 156 + 3.25 * 48 = 312 QKC, of which 3.25 is the basic rewards offered on each shard. The illustration of the token economics model above could greatly motivate root chain miners to mine as many sharded block headers as possible. (There is an upper limit to the number of sharded block headers.)
Consensus Mechanism and Guardian Plan
Mainnet 1.0 applies a simple hybrid PoW/PoS — proof of staked work (PoSW) which is exclusively developed by QuarkChain.
Simply speaking, PoSW combines the two main features of PoW and PoS, incentivizing miners by staking. The higher percent of all hash power of the network, the more stakes will be needed to mine.
QuarkChain Mainnet 1.0 supports sharding blockchains and a root blockchain. At the early stage of Mainnet 1.0, to protect the root chain from hash power attach, a simplified version of PoSW will be applied, i.e. the Guardian Plan. At this stage, the root chain hash power will be completely carried out by guardians. When Mainnet 1.0 runs stably, the consensus algorithm at the root chain will gradually transition to PoSW.
Guardian Plan is designed only for the root chain. Mining difficulty on each shard is completely determined by the hash power. Mining rewards obtained from guardian nodes will all be used for QuarkChain ecosystem and community construction. Users are able to earn rewards by applying to participate in the Guardian Plan or voting. Articles regarding the Guardian Plan and the distribution of rewards will be published soon.
Mining Algorithms
Two different types of mining algorithms adopted by QuarkChain are given as follows:
QKChash
To solve the problem of high-performance ASIC being concentrated in a few, after extensive research, QuarkChain founder Dr. Qi Zhou has developed a mining algorithm — QKChash, which makes the mining efficiency of CPU is close to ASIC miners. This ensures the security of Boston consensus and encourages the mining decentralization.
Ethash
Ethash is the PoW mining algorithm for Ethereum.
Mainnet Token Swap
We expect to start mainnet token swap after the mainnet runs stably for at least three months. Please pay close attention to the official announcement. Do not trust incorrect information released by any third party, and be careful of fraud. The mainnet token swap will be carried out in qPocket. We are working very closely with crypto exchanges for mainnet token swap.
The launch of Singularity marks a new starting point for QuarkChain and opens the future blockchain universe. QuarkChain team will never stop to move forward alongside the roadmap and focus on the multiple areas in the blockchain ecosystem. We will be working with supporters from the global community to make a more efficient and flexible blockchain system. Although a Quark remains tiny, it has been existing since the beginning of the universe. After a long term of evolution, many dazzling things have been generated. We hope that the future blockchain world would be shining in the real world via the mainnet launch and our unremitting efforts.