Welcome to the 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 is a pre-launch cryptocurrency. Quai Network 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
“When we’re looking at non-crypto natives, the interesting thing is, there’s actually some pretty good case studies [surrounding digital currency] in the world, specifically China and India. In 2015, it was very much a cash-based economy. But in 2017, if you went to China and you got off the plane, and you didn’t have a SIM card with a WeChat account, you basically couldn’t get around. WeChat and AliPay had become the primary mechanisms by which everyone conducted commerce everywhere, for everything.”
– Quai co-founder Dr. K, via Twitter Spaces on May 17, 2023
Dr. K is the co-founder of Quai Network and the CTO of Dominant Strategies. In this quote, Dr. K gives his reasoning for why crypto adoption is being held back primarily by a lack of technical ability, rather than an unwillingness to use or fear of digital currency.
China, India, and some other technologically progressive countries have already made a near-complete switch from physical to digital commerce in only a few short years. Clearly, users don’t mind a digital currency/economy. Thus, if a cryptocurrency can provide a better digital payments solution than existing fiat-powered alternatives, it can achieve just as significant adoption as WeChat/AliPay did by offering a better payments solution than physical money.
Technical Term of the Week
Account (blockchain) – An address on a blockchain that can own and transfer assets (like cryptocurrency) and execute smart contracts. Accounts are a core component of nearly all blockchain networks, and the status and balance of each account are updated with every transaction affecting it.
A blockchain account is associated with two main components: a public key and a private key. These two keys form a cryptographic key pair that is crucial for the functionality and security of the blockchain.
The public key is used to generate an account address. It is made public and is used to send funds to an account. When someone sends cryptocurrency to an account, they’re essentially sending it to the address derived from that account’s public key.
The private key is, as the name implies, meant to be kept private. It’s used to sign transactions, acting as a sort of digital signature. The blockchain network verifies these signatures using the associated public key. If someone has access to an account’s private key, they can sign transactions on that account’s behalf, meaning they control the account and the assets it holds.
A wallet is a user-friendly tool that helps manage your accounts. Wallets store your private and public keys, help you generate new keys, check your account balance, sign transactions, and interact with smart contracts. Wallets are often essential for simple interfacing with blockchain networks, but they do not “hold” your cryptocurrency as a physical wallet holds cash; instead, they hold the keys you use to access and manage your blockchain account.
Overall, an account is deeply intertwined with public and private keys, and the relationship between these three elements is managed with the aid of a wallet. These concepts are slightly unique within Quai Network, as each account is only able to sign transactions within the chain it is located. Thus, within Quai’s multi-chain infrastructure, each Zone chain will have its own set of accounts and balances. This method of dividing up which chains store which accounts is known as state sharding, and is one of the ways Quai Network scales exponentially while keeping slice node (nodes that only hold 1 Zone) hardware requirements permanently low.
Top Posts of the Week
- Quai Community Member and Moderator Pavil posted his Quai merch box:
- A Quai Network Happy Hour, hosted by Dominant Strategies and ATX DAO, was held on June 8th:
- Dr. K discussed the case studies of China and India as examples of how people are willing to use digital payments:
- A community-based Quai event was hosted in Gombe State, Nigeria. Quai co-founders called in to the event to offer a brief presentation and answer questions:
- A recording of Quai University Call #8, focusing on how sharding is used to scale Quai, is now live on YouTube:
- The latest update from core testing shows Quai has the ability to process more transactions per second than Visa with only 9 shards:
Upcoming Events
Quai Network Office Hours with Justin: June 13, 2023 @ 10am CST – Join Dominant Strategies team member Justin for a casual discussion/AMA on Quai Network’s technology.
Quai Network Office Hours with Max: June 15, 2023 @ 9am CST – Join Dominant Strategies team member Max for a casual discussion/AMA on Quai Network’s technology.
Join us to build a better blockchain.
Quai Network is an open-source Proof-of-Entropy-Minima blockchain network utilizing the capabilities of merged mining to increase throughput and security. Users of Quai Network will enjoy fast transaction times without compromising decentralization and security. Miners will have competitive mining opportunities across the many blockchains within the network.
Capable of thousands of transactions per second, the Quai Network is a new solution to scalability that is soon to be ready for mainnet release.
Terms & Conditions / Disclaimer
The entirety of the Quai Genesis grants program, including the content of this article, is subject to the Terms and Conditions outlined here.
Opinions, ideas, and statements shared in this update are delivered with numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties which are subject to change over time. There are multiple risk factors, including those related to blockchain, cryptographic systems, and technologies generally, as well Quai’s business, operations and results of operations, that could cause actual results or developments anticipated not to be realized or, even if substantially realized, to fail to achieve any or all of the benefits that could be expected therefrom. We reserve the right to unilaterally, completely, or partially change plans, expectations, and intentions stated herein at any time and for any reason, in our sole and absolute discretion, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise. ACCORDINGLY, WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT RELY ON, AND DO NOT MAKE ANY FINANCIAL DECISION OR INVESTMENT BASED ON, THE STATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS UPDATE OR ANY OF OUR UPDATES/ARTICLES — INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY SELLING OR TRADING OF QUAI TOKENS, ETHER, OR ANY OTHER CRYPTOGRAPHIC OR BLOCKCHAIN TOKEN, OR THE SECURITIES OF ANY COMPANY.
The views, opinions, and statements made in this update are those of an individual author and not those of any institution, University, or legal entity operating within the jurisdiction of The United States or beyond. There is no association between these views, opinions, and statements and any for-profit or non-profit entity, particularly with Universities, Foundations, and other Agencies located within the United States. Any perception of such an association is purely accidental, and will be rectified immediately if brought to our attention by the reader.