QUAI ROADMAP
North stars
Build the open monetary network for the world: secure enough for global value, fast enough for everyday payments, and neutral enough for anyone to use.
- 01
Fix the money
Money should be open, neutral, and hard to debase. QUAI is the scarce reserve asset, with inflation designed to fall over time. Qi is energy-denominated cash for everyday payments. Both are secured by open protocol rules, not the promise of a bank or issuer.
- 02
Scale proof of work
Bitcoin proved that proof of work can secure neutral money. Quai extends that foundation with PoEM, sharding, workshares, dual ledgers, and EVM programmability—so proof of work can support global payments and open markets without giving up decentralization.
- 03
Compound security with SOAP
SOAP lets miners earn QUAI with hardware they already run and turns external mining subsidies into QUAI buybacks. SHA-256 and Scrypt are live; native Bitcoin proofs are next. As legacy subsidies decline, Quai creates a new market for proof of work and compounds the hashrate securing the network.
- 04
Keep it permissionless
Anyone can run the code, hold their own keys, build without permission, and transact without being shut out. Privacy is a right. The network answers to cryptography and consensus, not the discretion of an institution or gatekeeper.
- 05
Become the default
Quai becomes the default by earning it: wallets people trust, tools developers choose, infrastructure that stays online, and markets deep enough for real commerce. Every release should make the network easier to use, easier to build on, and harder to replace.
Research foundations
PUBLISHED / EVOLVEDTestnets
COMPLETED / ORCHARD LIVEMainnet rollout
LIVE / DUAL LEDGERSProtocol releases
MAINNET UPGRADESEcosystem
SHIPPED PRODUCTSResearch foundations
PUBLISHED / EVOLVED
BlockReduce
Original hierarchy of merge-mined chains for parallel state.
HashCore
General-purpose processor proof-of-work via inverted benchmarking.
Hierarchical longest chain
Formalized shared PoW and native cross-chain coordination.
Proof of Entropy Minima
Intrinsic block work reduces orphaning and accelerates finality.
Majority is not required
Models rational double-spend profitability below majority hashpower.
A better PoW fork choice
Security analysis for intrinsic-work chain selection.
Reignite the Crypto Revolution
PoEM, sharding, workshares, dual ledgers, and energy money.
Wolfram joins as advisor
Stephen Wolfram advises Quai and records a three-part series on blockchain's future.
Proportional Reward Splitting
Workshare-based payouts reduce selfish-mining incentives.
- Accepted to Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT) 2026 at LSE, 2026-07-16.
- Developed with Common Prefix. Already live on mainnet as workshares.
- AFT 2026 ↗
Slow and Steady
Verifiable delays as an anti-front-running mechanism.
Testnets
COMPLETED / ORCHARD LIVE
Stone Age
First incentivized alpha: mining, uptime, and transfers.
Bronze Age
1,700 nodes · 1.4M blocks · 110K+ transactions.
Colosseum · Garden · Orchard
Internal integration and developer environments—not public Ages.
Iron Age
PoEM, cross-chain EVMs, GPU mining, and Pelagus in public.
Iron Age stress test
9 shards · 2,000+ TPS · 205M+ transactions · 250K+ accounts.
Mainnet-compatible devnet
New SDK, Pelagus, faucet, RPC, explorer, and docs stack.
Golden Age
Final feature test: QUAI/Qi, conversions, lockups, PoEM, sharding.
Orchard
Production-like public testing now runs alongside mainnet.
Silicon Age
Named in the early plan; no official launched era was found.
Mainnet rollout
LIVE / DUAL LEDGERS
First mainnet blocks
Genesis established and Node Wrangler mining began.
Public mining
Open proof-of-work participation began on mainnet.
QUAI transfers
Account-ledger transfers and application deployment opened.
Qi activation
UTXO energy money, wallet conversions, and cash-like privacy.
Wrapped Qi (WQI)
EVM-wrapped Qi for contracts and DeFi. Shipped in Pelagus 1.0.46.
MiCA approval
Full approval under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.
SOAP
External PoW work begins driving continuous QUAI demand.
Singularity fork
Supply reset at prime block 1,530,500. Future unlocks removed, workshares doubled.
- ~1.67B genesis QUAI burned. Monthly unlocks skip those addresses.
- Workshares per block 16 → 32; SHA and Scrypt shares 8 → 16 each.
- Shipped in go-quai v0.51.0.
Protocol releases
MAINNET UPGRADES
Conversion and sync recovery
Conversion slip and post-Qi desync fixes shipped in sequence.
- v0.46.0 → v0.46.4 shipped 2025-04-17 → 05-06, right after Qi activation.
- v0.46.4 removed the post-Qi data dependency behind node desyncs (PR #2635).
- Backwards compatible. Upgrade recommended to stay synced.
Epoch transition + EVM fixes
Hardened PoW verification and contract address grinding.
- ProgPoW lookup-cache fix ahead of the first epoch turnover at prime block 388,800.
- CREATE opcode max tries 1,000 → 10,000 at zone block 1,865,000.
- Not backward compatible. All nodes had to upgrade.
EVM and entropy upgrade
New opcodes, larger contract limit, and entropy adjustments.
- New EVM opcodes: PUSH0, MCOPY, TSTORE, TLOAD.
- Max contract code size 24 KB → 32 KB at zone block 3,490,000.
- kQuai reset to baseline and stricter entropy filtering on block fetch.
Multi-algorithm proof of work
KawPoW, SHA-256, Scrypt, workshares, buybacks, and burns.
- SOAP activation at prime block 1,171,500 (2025-12-17).
- Block PoW moved from ProgPoW to KawPoW merged mining.
- SHA-256 and Scrypt share mining added.
ASIC compatibility
Improved firmware support and reduced orphan workshares.
- Deeper SHA and Scrypt inclusion to cut orphan workshares.
- Firmware compatibility fixes for SHA and Scrypt ASIC models.
- Linear staleness discount on share rewards.
Supply reset + workshare capacity
Removed future unlocks and doubled workshare inclusion 16 → 32.
- Singularity fork at prime block 1,530,500 (2026-03-19).
- ~1.67B genesis QUAI burned. Future unlocks to those addresses skipped.
- Workshares per block 16 → 32; SHA and Scrypt shares 8 → 16 each.
API repair
Focused mainnet API fixes after Singularity.
- Mainnet API fix (PR #2710).
- Full changelog v0.51.1 → v0.52.0 on GitHub.
SHA-equivalent rewards
Reward normalization prepared SOAP for native Bitcoin proofs.
- BIP-302 fork: consensus-enforced AuxPoW on the Quai side. Bitcoin itself is unchanged.
- SHA-equivalent reward normalization as groundwork for native Bitcoin proofs.
- Bitcoin SOAP revenue is not yet verified live.
Reward stability
Longer EMA smooths rewards, difficulty, and conversions.
- Longer EMA window smooths rewards, difficulty, and conversion rates.
- Net peers fix and API updates.
- Activated 2026-06-12.
Node improvements
Latest required node upgrade in the public release record.
- General node improvements.
- Activated 2026-06-25. All nodes upgrade as soon as possible.
KawPoW cache guard
Guards epoch and light-cache DAG size. Stratum fixes for local mining.
- Improved KawPoW cache handling.
- Stratum logic updates for local mining.
- Announcement ↗
Ecosystem
SHIPPED PRODUCTS
Quai Dashboard beta
Early rewards and participation control surface.
Pelagus
Open-source browser wallet for QUAI, Qi, and Quai apps.
quais.js SDK
JavaScript SDK for Quai. The v1 rewrite shipped with the mainnet-compatible devnet.
- npm package `quais` since 2022-12. The v1 alpha series started 2024-09.
- Latest 1.0.0-alpha.56 on npm, 2026-07-29. Qi wallet reliability landed in alpha.54 (2026-04).
- npm ↗
Mobile Developer Kit
Portable QUAI/Qi wallet foundation for mobile builders.
Kipper
Creator tipping and rewards directly on X.
Tangem hardware wallet
Official Quai cold wallet with Tangem. Community-chosen design, pre-orders, then shipping.
Zebec cards
Spend QUAI on Zebec Silver and Carbon cards. Quai Black Card planned. Go-live not verified.
StratumX
Distributed, non-custodial, zero-fee solo mining.
Symbiosis Bridge Live
USDT and cross-chain routing into Quai.
Entropic
Local-first, sandboxed desktop AI agent workspace.
Kraken listing
Regulated exchange access and QUAI liquidity.
Blip rebuilt
Native mobile self-custody, assets, requests, and pay flows.
State of Quai Q2 2026
Institutional report: SOAP revenue, supply after Singularity, security, ecosystem.
Quainance
USDT bridge, QUAI/WQI swaps, and liquidity positions.
Bazarr NFT marketplace
List, buy, auction, and trade NFTs on mainnet.
Quai Explorer
Balances, locks, tokens, TVL, conversions, and mining.
Active program
NO DELIVERY DATES
Native Bitcoin proofs
Connect Bitcoin work without changing Bitcoin. BTC and BCH share one SHA256d lane.
- Team dev update: BTC and BCH will share a single SHA256d lane with minimal miner changes.
- v0.53.0 shipped the BIP-302 reward groundwork. Bitcoin SOAP revenue is not yet verified live.
- Dev update ↗
Deeper liquidity
Grow contract-level liquidity and network DeFi TVL.
Mining finance
Turn locked rewards into composable claims and markets.
Real-world capital
Tokenized cash and a Quai-yielding money-market path.
BTC on-chain
Federation → BitVM → covenant-secured peg.
Add execution capacity
Expand zones only when sustained congestion requires it.
Light proofs
Read-only Prime NiPoPoW proof engine. Groundwork for light clients.
Inference is Work
AI inference as a mineable form of work. Exploratory.
Monero and Zcash as SOAP chains
Evaluate RandomX and Equihash work as future SOAP sources. No commitment.
Post-quantum security
Evaluate schemes, migration, and wallets. No scheme selected.
Stronger payment privacy
Explore private constructions beyond current Qi design.
Qi privacy usability
Open go-quai work on Qi privacy UX.
x402 on Quai
HTTP-native payments settled on Quai. Two PRs open in the x402 fork.
- PR #2: exact scheme for Quai. Adds the @x402/quai mechanism, a Permit2 proxy, a native QUAI escrow contract, and the scheme spec.
- PR #3: work scheme. Adds a profile-based payment mechanism with a Quai profile spec.
- Both open since 2026-07-29. Not merged upstream.
- PR #3 ↗
Machine-native money
Let software earn and spend neutral energy money.
Wallet and payment reach
Broaden merchant, swap, connectivity, and recovery flows.