Quai Network FAQs - Quai Network

Here, you’ll find an ever-growing list of answers to common questions regarding Quai Network. These questions cover the vast scope of Quai Network’s unique features, consensus mechanisms, tokenomics, and overall infrastructure implications.

General

What is Quai Network?

Quai Network is a massively scalable hierarchy of blockchains which aims to support necessary transaction throughput to scale globally, without sacrificing network security.

Central to Quai’s mission is to create a new monetary system, which is:

Fully decentralized
Cheap (low transaction costs)
Fast (global transactions can be settled in seconds)
Representative of value from the real world

While some digital assets have some combination of the above criteria, none can claim all 4 properties. Quai’s solution is the combination of two tokens, Quai and Qi. Quai is an EVM-compatible network asset. QI, a stablecoin-alternative that’s emitted proportionally to the difficulty of newly mined blocks on Quai Network. As the energy input needed to mine Quai increases, so do the QI rewards paid to miners. This essentially creates an asset whose value is solely linked to the current hashrate of the network.

When is Quai Mainnet Going Live?

The specific launch date for Quai mainnet is yet to be announced. Stay tuned to Quai Network’s official channels for the latest updates on the mainnet release.

When Will Quai’s Native Tokens, QUAI And QI, Be Launched?

The launch dates for Quai’s native tokens, QUAI and QI, will be announced closer to the mainnet release. Follow Quai Network for the latest updates and announcements.

How Are Fees On Each Quai Chain Calculated?

Fees on Quai chains are based on the computational resources required for transaction processing. These fees are paid with QUAI or QI tokens, depending on the chain you’re using, and the specific amount depends on the transaction’s complexity and type.

How Does Quai Network Ensure Decentralization?

There are three main mechanisms that promote decentralization of Quai Network: the ability to mine new blocks via GPU, Quai’s chain hierarchy, and the distribution and tokenomic structure of QI

GPU Mining:

By enabling GPU mining, Quai provides a low barrier to entry to participate in providing hashrate and securing the network, resulting in a more decentralized network of miners

Chain Hierarchy:

Quai Network aims to distribute its total hashrate equally among Region and Zone chains, which maintains total security while further decentralizing the network
If demand increases, Quai is built to scale dynamically via sharding by automatically adding additional Region and Zone chains.
This scaling method ensures that hashpower is never thinly stretched among shards, so overall security and per-shard processing capacity are never compromised

QI Distribution/Tokenomics:

The QI supply at origin is 0, this is due to the nature in which QI is related to the economics of hashrate based emissions.
As the hashrate for Quai Network grows, more QI will be emitted in block rewards, scaling the QI supply in tandem with the network and preventing “early” miners from gaining a large amount of supply

What Partnerships/Collaborations Has Quai Network Established?

IO.NET:

Quai partnered with io.net, providing Quai with access to their vast GPU compute network. Since Quai is secured by compute power, io.net’s large network of GPUs helps Quai maintain robust security for its network of blockchains.

Lumerin:

Quai and Lumerin have teamed up to expand access to distribute hashpower for the Bitcoin network. Specifically, Quai will provide access to Lumerin’s hashpower marketplace, which enables anyone to contribute their own computing power to mine BTC. This aligns Quai with the broader PoW-based ecosystem and exemplifies our commitment to lower the barriers of entry of blockchain mining.

Portal:

Quai’s partnership with Portal DeFi enables cross-chain transactions between Quai and the Bitcoin network, allowing Quai-native assets such as QUAI and QI to be swapped for native BTC. Both of these tokens will have liquidity pools on Portal DEX, bringing Quai’s DeFi capabilities beyond EVM-compatible chains to the budding ecosystem of Bitcoin DeFi.

Technical

What Is Proof Of Entropy Minima (PoEM) Consensus?

Quai’s use of Proof-of-Entropy-Minima (PoEM) represents an innovative advancement in blockchain consensus mechanisms. It aims to address key limitations observed in both Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

While PoW is renowned for its security and decentralized nature, it suffers from high energy consumption and inefficiencies in fork resolution. PoS, developed to mitigate PoW’s energy usage, introduces its own challenges such as the need for multiple data propagation rounds and a subjective consensus approach.

PoEM combines the strengths of PoW’s objective framework with improvements in efficiency and scalability. It ensures instantaneous fork resolution through the concept of intrinsic block weight. This allows nodes to deterministically select the next block, eliminating the prolonged uncertainty seen in PoW and the propagation delays in PoS.

What Is The Hierarchical Structure Of Blockchains Within Quai Network?

Within Quai are three categories of blockchains – Prime, Region, and Zone:

Prime Chains: The top-level chains that coordinate activities throughout the entire Quai network. There will be one Prime chain that’s mined, and therefore secured, by all miners.

Region Chains: The intermediate-level chains that manage regional transactions and data, acting as a bridge between Prime and Zone chains. Each miner can only mine one Region chain at a time.

Zone Chains: These chains handle local transactions and provide detailed, localized transaction processing. Like Region chains, each miner can only mine one Zone chain at a time.

Quai Network will begin with a single shard and add new shards as network demand increases. Adding more shards into the hierarchy enables higher throughput, at the cost of increased cross-chain settlement times. Therefore, it is desirable for the network to activate only as few chains as are necessary to satisfy the users’ demand for transactions.

What Are Shards, And How Does Quai Use Them To Scale?

Shards are smaller, independent chains that can execute within the Quai network, and each shard processes its own subset of transactions. Sharding enhances scalability by allowing parallel processing, significantly increasing transaction throughput.

What Is Merged Mining?

Merged mining involves mining a block header that includes data from Prime, Region, and Zone blockchains. This method allows a miner’s hash rate to be distributed across all three blockchains, enhancing efficiency and network security.

What Are Merge-Mined Parachains?

Merge-mined parachains are blockchains outside of the Quai Network that inherit security and hash power from Quai through merged mining. This provides a cost-effective security solution for developers, eliminating the need for apps to build their own native validator network.

Is Quai EVM-Compatible?

Yes, Quai Network is EVM-compatible, allowing developers to deploy and execute Ethereum smart contracts seamlessly on the Quai blockchain. In fact, the Zone chains can be thought of as Ethereum-like blockchains running in parallel.

By maintaining EVM compatibility, developers on Ethereum and the wide ecosystem of EVM blockchains can start building on Quai using Solidity-based and SolidityX-based smart contracts. With a vast majority of blockchain developers currently working on EVM chains, Quai presents an interesting alternative for builders with its built-in interoperability features which enable seamless cross-chain interactions between Zone chains.

What Is Multithreaded Execution?

Multithreaded execution within Quai Network refers to processing multiple transactions simultaneously across different threads (i.e. Zone chains). This significantly boosts the network’s transaction throughput and overall performance, bringing major improvements from the single-threaded capability of popular L1 blockchains like Ethereum.

Economic Features

What Is Quai’s Two-Token Model?

Quai Network’s economy is built around two native tokens: QUAI and QI. These tokens primarily serve as gas tokens and mining incentives, with a built-in mechanism allowing conversion between them.

Gas Tokens:

QUAI: Used for programmable Quai blockchains, enabling smart contracts.
QI: Serves UTXO-based chains, ideal for straightforward exchanges.

Block Rewards:

Both tokens are distributed as block rewards during mining, with issuance rates tied to network usage.
QUAI’s issuance rate is linked to bits of difficulty, increasing at a diminishing rate to create scarcity.
QI’s issuance rate is linked to mining difficulty, making it a proxy for energy costs.

Conversion:

Quai’s conversion mechanism allows holders to convert between QUAI and QI, enabling arbitrage opportunities and stabilizing their values.

What Are The Economic Incentives For Using Quai Network?

Quai’s infrastructure and block rewards system provide the following unique economic benefits for users, miners, and developers:

For Users:

QI presents a unique alternative to fiat currency and stablecoins by serving as a network-backed token.
Users also benefit from the enhanced performance enabled by Quai’s unique tech, such as 1k TPS for each Zone chain.

For Miners:

Choose what you earn – receive block rewards in QUAI or QI depending on your personal preferences, market outlook, etc.
Low requirements to mine – can be done from a personal computer with a standard GPU, CPU, and at least 4GB of RAM

For Developers:

Build high-performance applications that benefit from high performance via Quai’s dynamic scaling as well as seamless interoperability via hash linked references
Easily deploy smart contracts from EVM-compatible blockchains and further optimize them via Quai’s unique infrastructure

Community Involvement

How Can I Get More Involved In The Quai Community?

If you’re interested in getting involved, jump into our Discord and Telegram groups! We’ve got chats for everything Quai, from general discussion to specific tech topics. You can also join our current testnet community program, Quaioneers, to really spread the word.

But that’s not all! Be sure to check out our accounts on X and YouTube as well for more announcements and in-depth information about Quai.

Interested in working with us? Check out our job postings here.

Interested in building on Quai? Check out the developer docs here.

Are There Community Events/Projects I Can Join?

Absolutely! We always have community-led initiatives going on. Keep an eye on our channels for announcements, specifically our Community Discord and announcement-specific Telegram. We also encourage you to start your own projects or events – we’re all about those grassroots initiatives.

What’s In It For Me If I’m An Active Community Member?

Tons! Aside from the awesome Quai knowledge and connections, we hook up our active members with exclusive events, swag, and sometimes even a chance to influence Quai’s direction. Upon mainnet launch, we will have a fully fledged ambassador program (more details on this soon!)

What Support Resources Are Available For Quai Network Users?

You can refer to the following resources for direct support, deep knowledge bases for all things Quai, and more specific FAQs for tech-centric users such as developers and node operators:

Customer/User Support:

Knowledge Bases:

Lectures/Presentations

Github

Official Quai forum

FAQs:

For developers