The Quai Token

Quai is a digitally scarce asset designed to function as a programmable store-of-value within Quai Network. Quai has an effectively fixed supply in the sense that inflation trends toward zero and there will be a terminal supply amount -- however, this terminal supply amount will be determined by market dynamics, and is not predefined.

Quai is the native token of the account-based shards within Quai Network, supporting smart-contracting capabilities with modified EVMs.

Quai Emissions

Quai rewards are issued in proportion to the “bits” of difficulty that a valid block hash achieved, approximately represented by the number of leading zeros in the target value.

$$Block Reward_{Quai} ∝ log_{2}(Difficulty)$$

Note that there is a proportionality constant/variable in the Quai block reward function above, the exact calculus for which will be shared publicly closer to Mainnet launch.

Quai Supply

The supply of Quai is determined by the following formula:

$$Supply_{Quai} = (Genesis_{Quai}) + ∑(Emissions_{Quai}) ± ∑(Conversions_{Quai})$$

The block reward function only defines how many Quai tokens can potentially be emitted. Actual, realized supply emissions from block rewards are determined by the choices miners must make to receive only either Quai or Qi, a selection they may change going forward at any time.

In addition to the effects from this new flow of Quai and/or Qi issuance, the respective supply stock of Quai is affected by the initial genesis allocation of Quai and the conversion feature between existing Qi and Quai at the current block mining rewards ratio (e.g. between the # of Quai tokens/block and # of Qi tokens/block), which is accessible to anyone -- not just miners.

As such, the supply of Quai at any given time is the cumulative result of the genesis allocation, miner-selected emissions, and token conversions.