Welcome to the twenty-fifth edition of “This Week in Quai,” an initiative by the development company of Quai Network, Dominant Strategies. This Week in Quai offers weekly updates to the Quai Community by aggregating popular Quai quotes and social posts from the past week and offering a schedule for upcoming events.
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What is Quai?
Quai Network is a pre-launch cryptocurrency. Quai is the first blockchain protocol that is simultaneously decentralized, censorship resistant, and infinitely scalable. Quai, in contrast to traditional cryptocurrencies, functions as a network of many interoperable blockchains braided together. Due to a breakthrough discovery that occurred during research on Proof-of-Work, Quai Network utilizes a new consensus mechanism, Proof-of-Entropy-Minima (PoEM), which eliminates all consensus-based forks, and enables all Quai nodes to remain in “perpetual consensus.”
Quote of the Week
“Quai Nation –
Applications for Wave 1 of the Genesis grants program are now live!
- Two or more teams will be selected to receive milestone-based grants in Mainnet Quai tokens
- At least one team will be selected to build a decentralized exchange
- At least one team will be selected to build a wallet
- Applications are open now and will close when the Iron Age Testnet reaches an average of 400,000 blocks
Full details and the link to the application can be found in the Quai blog at https://qu.ai/genesis/”
- Dominant Strategies team member Max via an Announcement in the Quai Discord
This announcement from Max announced and explained Wave 1 of the new Quai Genesis program to the Quai community. The Quai Genesis grants program is designed to create a strong foundation for the growing Quai ecosystem. To encourage the deployment of at least one wallet and DEX that address Quai’s unique architecture, milestone-based grants in Mainnet Quai will be agreed upon with teams accepted to the program.
While Wave 1 of the Genesis program will only provide grants for wallets and DEXs, future Waves of the Genesis program will have a much broader scope, focusing on incentivizing the deployment of the many other cornerstones of a modern Web3 ecosystem.
If you or your team have experience building wallets and/or decentralized exchanges, we want to hear from you; whether you have an existing product to integrate Quai into or are building a brand-new Quai-native project, check out the application today at https://qu.ai/genesis/ !
Technical Term of the Week
Stale/Orphan / Uncle Block – A valid block that is not included in the main/canonical chain. Stale/orphan blocks are slightly different from uncle blocks – a stale/orphan block, generally specific to Bitcoin, is completely discarded. An uncle block, as used in PoW Ethereum, is not completely discarded, but is referenced into the blockchain in a different way.
Have you ever wondered why your miner will sometimes mine a block that gets “rejected”? More than likely, you’re producing an uncle block.
Stale/Orphan / Uncle blocks are the leading cause of forks within traditional hash-based blockchains. These forks occur when two equally valid blocks are proposed near-simultaneously, causing nodes to have no preference between the two blocks. When one of these forks eventually outweighs the other, it is made canonical, and the other block becomes either a stale/orphan block or an uncle block.
Consensus-based forks negatively impact the performance of a hash-based blockchain by diverting computational resources and creating inefficiencies in the system. The generation of stale/orphan and uncle blocks represent wasted computational effort, as these blocks, despite being the product of substantial mining, do not contribute to the weight and security of the blockchain. In Ethereum, for example, while uncle blocks still provide a reduced reward to miners, this reward is less than what would have been earned from a block on the main chain, indicating an underutilization of computational resources. Additionally, such forks create uncertainty about the state of the blockchain until the majority of the network reaches consensus on the valid chain, potentially disrupting services and users relying on it.
Quai Network’s Proof-of-Entropy-Minima (PoEM) consensus mechanism removes this period of uncertainty by ensuring accurate weighing of blocks. When running the PoEM algorithm, nodes will always have a preference between any two proposed blocks.
PoEM doesn’t directly reduce the occurrence of stale/orphan or uncle blocks, but it helps to reduce their impact on the performance and security of the network. In the event that two blocks are proposed simultaneously – a scenario that can still occur under PoEM – the consensus mechanism ensures that nodes can immediately discern between the two competing forks, because no two blocks can ever be weighted equally. This distinctive feature of PoEM, unlike other consensus models where a preference might not always be immediately clear, allows the network to immediately isolate the lesser-weighted block and classify it as a stale/orphan block or an uncle block.
The ability to instantly resolve such forks not only minimizes disruptions to the network but also optimizes computational resources. Rather than waiting for the network to eventually favor one fork over the other, which can be a resource-intensive and wasteful process, PoEM allows for instant decision-making, leading to a more efficient blockchain with less wasted computational power.
Top Posts of the Week
- Applications for Wave 1 of the Quai Genesis grants program are open:
- Some Quai miners have started posting their rigs on Twitter:
- A Dr. K themed Halloween meme was posted on Twitter:
- A montage of community rigs was created from pictures in Discord:
- The initial group of Node Wranglers has been accepted:
Upcoming Events
Quai Network Office Hours with Justin: November 7, 2023 @ 10am CST – Join Dominant Strategies team member Justin for a casual discussion/AMA on Quai Network’s technology & Iron Age Testnet!
Quai Network Office Hours with Max: November 9, 2023 @ 9am CST – Join Dominant Strategies team member Max for a casual discussion/AMA on Quai Network’s technology & Iron Age Testnet!
Quai Fridays Twitter Space w/ TowerDeFi: November 10, 2023 @ 11am CST – Join members of the Dominant Strategies and TowerDeFi teams for a discussion on DeFi and swaps on Quai Network!