Quai Network Joins the Texas Blockchain Council
Our team at Dominant Strategies is excited to announce that Quai Network is an official member of the Texas Blockchain Council. The Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) is a non-profit organization that advocates for legislation friendly to Proof-of-Work and digital asset ownership.
Quai Network, as a new Layer-1 network extending Proof-of-Work to enable new features within blockchain, fits well into the TBC’s existing roster of teams and individuals working to advance Proof-of-Work.
Quai Network uses Proof-of-Work to:
- Achieve infinite scalability, keeping fees permanently low.
- Create a completely decentralized energy-linked asset (Qi) to fulfill crypto’s mission of digital peer-to-peer cash.
- Allow users to receive MEV resistance on their transactions, eliminating frontrunning and sandwich attacks.
By using an ASIC-resistant algorithm, a highly distributed base of GPU miners is encouraged to quickly respond to market incentives, keeping the Qi token linked to energy.
Interested in mining Quai for rewards during the Testnet phase? Check out the mining guide in the Quai Documentation.
Quai Network’s Use of Proof-of-Work to Revolutionize Blockchain
Scalability
Quai Network uses a form of scalability known as execution sharding to permanently maintain low transaction fees. Execution sharding in its simplest form can be thought of as running many interconnected blockchains in parallel. Within Quai Network, these execution shards (or independently running blockchains) are interconnected via merged mining, a form of Proof-of-Work where a single miner mines multiple blockchains simultaneously.
When attempting to utilize execution sharding without using Proof-of-Work (e.g. using Proof-of-Stake), there is no objective way for data and transactions to be transferred from one execution shard to another. Due to Quai Network’s unique ability to objectively coordinate many execution shards in a single network using Proof-of-Work, incredible scalability can be achieved without increasing node requirements or introducing trusted bridges/validator sets.
Energy-Based Money
Through the implementation of a unique two-token incentive structure based around Proof-of-Work, Quai Network uses PoW to maintain an “energy-based” asset that is constantly arbitraged by both miners and users to remain linked to the price of energy.
The concept of an “energy-based money” has been proposed by some of history’s greatest thinkers and inventors, including Buckminster Fuller and Henry Ford. Bitcoin’s implementation of Proof-of-Work provided the necessary framework for how this energy-based money could work with a loose tie to energy inputs, but remains heavily influenced by speculation and arbitrary supply shocks (halvings). Quai Network isolates the energy-based money incentives to one token (Qi) and speculative/deflationary incentives to a different token (Quai), to allow for this long-standing idea to become reality.
MEV Resistance
Unlike existing blockchains, which order transactions within each block based on priority fee paid to miners/validators, Quai Network enforces transaction ordering via the Proof-of-Work done to each transaction. Using this new ordering mechanism, users and dApps are able to achieve MEV resistance on their transactions by mining them. For transactions vulnerable to large amounts of MEV, users can mine them with sufficient work for it to be statistically impossible for any attacker to out-work their transaction in the time it is in the mempool.
This mechanism of ordering via Proof-of-Work is the only known way to eliminate MEV, as it aligns the markets for both inter and intra-block ordering. Additionally, any work done to mine transactions contributes to chain security, meaning there are incentives to help secure Quai Network outside of mining for block rewards.
GPU Minable
Within Proof-of-Work systems, there is an ongoing incentive to maximize hash efficiency by optimizing mining hardware. These optimizations often take the form of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), that are solely built to hash a specific coin’s algorithm. While ASICs are widely used to mine coins like Bitcoin and Kaspa, they can be more vulnerable to supply-side interruptions and potential bans than more general purpose hardware (such as GPUs) due to their single-purpose nature and limited number of manufacturers. Additionally, ASICs can be significantly more difficult and intentional for users to obtain, while many users already have at least one GPU on-hand for their daily computing needs.
Quai Network utilizes the ProgPoW algorithm for the mining of both blocks and transactions. ProgPoW was designed to be a more ASIC-resistant version of Ethash, but was discarded once Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake was finalized. By using ProgPoW, a heavily GPU-limited algorithm, it is ensured that widely available consumer hardware, such as GPUs, will always be competitive when mining Quai.
Quai miners determine the emissions of both Quai and Qi, and their responsiveness to the markets for Quai and Qi is critical to Qi’s functionality as energy-based money. Having a highly distributed set of miners, ensured through ASIC resistance, encourages better responsiveness to market incentives (and thus a tighter link between Qi and the cost of energy) through competition.
Interested in mining Quai for rewards during the Testnet phase? Check out the mining guide in the Quai Documentation.
Benefits and Efficiency of Proof-of-Work in Quai
In recent years, Proof-of-Work has often been looked at as an inefficient and unnecessary use of energy. Quai Network’s implementation of Proof-of-Work addresses many of the inefficiencies identified by critics, while retaining the necessary link between network consensus and real-world value expenditure.
Through the use of execution sharding, Quai Network is able to process upwards of 50,000 transactions per second at scale. Assuming the same energy expenditure as Bitcoin and maximum load on both networks, Quai is more than 10,000 times more energy-efficient than Bitcoin on a per-transaction basis.
Further, when Proof-of-Work is a profitable way to expend energy, crypto mining can be used to increase renewable energy usage.
Conclusion
Our team at Dominant Strategies sees Quai Network becoming a member of the TBC as an important step both in connecting with other work-based projects and in advocating for institutional acceptance of Proof-of-Work. Given Quai Network’s unique use of Proof-of-Work as an integral aspect of nearly every new feature offered, we see a bright future for Quai Network as a member of the TBC.
Quai Network is currently in the Testnet phase, quickly gearing up for a Mainnet launch in Summer 2024. During this Testnet phase, a variety of incentives are available to GPU miners, developers, and users of Quai. Visit the Quai Documentation to learn more about these incentives, and join the Quai Discord to get involved with the community and ask questions.
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Quai Network is an open-source work-based blockchain network utilizing execution sharding to increase throughput. Users of Quai Network will enjoy fast transaction times and permanently low fees 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.
Disclaimer
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.
