Qtum is designed to implement the best parts of the Bitcoin and Ethereum projects, into a business-friendly blockchain. They are implementing the Bitcoin Improvement Protocols and using the Ethereum Virtual Machine, digital currency enthusiasts can finally agree on one platform that will offer stability and direction.
QTUM Hackathon
QTUM is about to launch its first online hackathon which will last for three months and welcomes anyone who aspires to build on or for QTUM to join. The hackathon will accept online submission and promises handsome financial reward in addition to a spot to QTUM’s global dev con and other community support.
Recent Developments
At Consensus 2018, Jordan Earls, Qtum’s co-founder and lead developer, appeared on the “On Device Key Management” panel moderated by Zaki Manian, executive director of the Trusted IoT Alliance.
Jordan spoke about the unique complexities of storing and staking cryptocurrency on the Qtum blockchain since the token has to be in a hot wallet to take part in validating transactions and securing the network.
QTUM, together with SpaceChain, Energo, and Bodhi, hosted another tech meetup at Columbia University on May 12th.
QTUM co-founder and lead developer Jordan Earls gave a brief introduction of QTUM’s upcoming X86 virtual machine and the soon to launch global developer tour and online hackathon. QTUM’s X86 virtual machine will enable programmers to write smart contracts with more mainstream programming languages such as Go, Rust, C++, and more. Jordan is leading the team in developing the said VM and currently, it is in the prototyping phase.
April 21st list of development updates
Some Technical Background on Qtum
Qtum is a hybrid blockchain application platform. Qtum’s core technology combines a fork of bitcoin core, an Account Abstraction Layer allowing for multiple Virtual Machines including the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Proof-of-Stake consensus aimed at tackling industry use cases. This will allow Smart Contracts and Decentralized Applications to run on a familiar foundation while offering a robust environment for developers.
They use the UTXO model which is similar to having an ecosystem built on bank checks (without an actual bank account, the check itself is the money). There is a “pay to” field which in our example provides instructions to how the money must be spent, and each check has an amount. You can not go to cash the check and say “cash half the check and give me half back”. Your “balance” per-se is the sum of the checks which you are capable of spending. This model is more difficult to explain, but because every token is either “spent” or “unspent” and there is no in-between, it is much easier to secure in a blockchain environment with less logic required to maintain that security.
With UTXOs however it is simpler to validate a transaction, which can be done simply by verifying that the transaction has been confirmed by the blockchain, in the case of the SPV protocol. The UTXO model also has been tested and proven to be secure by Bitcoin, which has operated for over 7 years with no significant changes to its core model.
White Papers
Smart-Contract Value-Transfer Protocols on a Distributed Mobile Application Platform (27 pages)
Blockchain-enabled smart contracts that employ proof-ofstake validation for transactions, promise significant performance advantages compared to proof-of-work solutions. For broad industry adoption, other important requirements must be met in addition. For example, stable backwards-compatible smart-contract systems must automate cross-organizational information-logistics orchestration with lite mobile wallets that support simple payment verification (SPV) techniques. The currently leading smart-contract solution Ethereum, uses computationally expensive proof-of-work validation, is expected to hard-fork multiple times in the future and requires downloading the entire blockchain. Consequently, Ethereum smart contracts have limited utility and lack formal semantics, which is a security issue. This whitepaper fills the gap in the state of the art by presenting the Qtum smart-contract framework that aims for sociotechnical application suitability, the adoption of formalsemantics language expressiveness, and the provision of smart-contract template libraries for rapid best-practice industry deployment. We discuss the Qtum utility advantages compared to the Ethereum alternative and present Qtum smart-contract future development plans for industrycases applications.
Qtum Blockchain Economy Whitepaper (33 pages)
The Qtum Blockchain (“Qtum”) is committed to develop an open source ecosystem for the blockchain community different from that of Bitcoin and Ethereum. It utilizes a Value Transfer Protocol (“VTP”) to achieve the transferring of value from peer to peer and to build up a decentralized application platform, which brings blockchain technology into the financial services, Internet of Things (“IoT”), supply chain management, social media, gaming and other industries. Innovative technology, comprehensive governance structure and board applications give Qtum advantages over Bitcoin and Ethereum as a public blockchain.
From a technical point of view, the highly qualified Qtum development team brings in the technology of identity, Oracle and Data feeds, and is committed to achieve the first IPoS (“Incentive Proof-of-Stake”) Smart Contract platform, which is compatible with Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs based on UTXO model). In terms of compliance, Qtum meets the regulatory requirements from different industries.
In terms of governance, Qtum established the Qtum Blockchain Foundation (“Foundation”), which is committed to develop the Qtum Blockchain, to advocate governance transparency, and to promote safety and harmony of the open source ecosystem. In order to ensure the sustainability, management effectiveness, and fund-raising security of the project in the open source community, the Foundation uses a governance model that considers the various dimensions of the project, including code management, financial management, public relations management, and other dimensions to operate and to deal with general affairs and privileged operations.
Regarding the applications built on Qtum, they bring in the off-chain factors that are used in Decentralized Applications (“DApp”) and Smart Contracts to connect the real world business logic with the blockchain world. By supporting multiple industries and methods, the applications will follow the Go Mobile strategy. In Qtum’s open environment, we not only support and promote the Go Mobile strategy, but also provide mobile services with third party developers, including mobile wallets, mobile DApp store, mobile smart contract applications, etc. In addition, we encourage third party developers to join us and help develop mobile blockchain services for Internet users.
by – Nextbigfuture.com
Source -Qtum.org
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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