QUAD is the world’s first truly post-quantum blockchain, meaning that it is highly resistant to future attacks by advanced quantum computers. QUAD’s novel consensus mechanism — Proof of Synergy — allows the QUAD™ to be fast, secure, and energy-efficient, while its dual-blockchain architecture mitigates the speed and scalability drawbacks usually associated with post-quantum cryptography.

One of the most problematic characteristics of a PQC cryptosystem is the large size of the public keys that are needed to verify new transactions.If implemented today into popular networks today like Ethereum, the large public keys utilized by PQC models could reduce the rate at which blocks could be validated by a factor of 14.

To solve this issue, the QUAD™ is divided into two chains. The primary chain focuses on processing transactions, and a secondary chain is used to store public keys.

Yes. QUAD is home to a quantum computing-resistant decentralized virtual machine that is capable of running smart contracts.

QUAD’s virtual machine is EVM-compatible, meaning that it is compatible with existing Ethereum technology. This allows developers to migrate existing contracts, or to develop new ones from scratch using the design standards and programming languages they are already familiar with.

The QUAD RAND Oracle™ is a means of generating a verifiably random number within a smart contract, serving as an alternative to the VRFs provided by third-party oracles today.

Random numbers are typically difficult to achieve on-chain, due to the fact that all nodes must run the same smart contract logic and achieve the same result. In the QUAD protocol, RAND provides a per-block random number as aggregated from nodes in the network at no cost — allowing DeFi and GameFi developers to reduce their reliance on expensive oracle providers and to offer new features to their dApps that were previously not economically viable.

This has obvious utility in gaming and lottery-style dApps, but can also be leveraged by the wider DeFi community for use cases like random (and tamper-proof) assignment of attributes to NFTs during an NFT minting event.

The QUAD PRICE Oracle™ provides a decentralized and reliable way in which developers can access the USD exchange rate of QAD tokens within their smart contracts. Network incentives encourage nodes to provide data about the current QAD price, and prices are established by calculating the median price submitted by nodes.

The QAD price — as determined by the QUAD PRICE Oracle™ — is included in the body of new blocks on the QUAD main chain, on a per-block basis. The QUAD PRICE Oracle™ is provided free of charge.

This data allows users and developers to denominate transactions, smart contract thresholds, or payout amounts in USD terms to be settled in QAD. This helps reduce reliance on stablecoins, which have proven to be a contentious asset to hold over the last few years.

The total supply of QAD coin is 2.3 BLN QAD.

QAD coin is deflationary, which means that the total supply is fixed and cannot be more than 2.3 BLN QAD (in this respect, similar to Bitcoin).

QAD block rewards diminish roughly once per day by a factor of 0.999.

The number of mineable coins will be 2.07 BLN QAD.

The number of pre-mined coins is 10% of total supply, so 230 MLN QAD.

PQC means Post Quantum Cryptography, meaning cryptography that is resistant to quantum computers algorithms like Shor’s or Grover ones.

Shor’s algorithm is a quantum computer algorithm for finding the prime factors of an integer. It was developed by mathematician Peter Shor. The efficiency of Shor’s algorithm is due to the efficiency of the quantum Fourier transform.

All standard (non-PQC) asymmetric cryptography, such as used in the Bitcoin or Ethereum protocol, can be broken by Shor’s algorithm implemented into a quantum computer with sufficient qubits.

The first iteration of the QUAD™ leverages Rainbow-III-Compressed as its underlying cryptographic standard. Rainbow was chosen as one of the finalists in the NIST PQC cryptography standardization review. There are a number of variations of this cryptographic standard. The QUAD Group have selected a variation called Rainbow-III-Compressed due to its high level of security, small signature size, fast signature verification, and a small private key of 64 bytes.

Rainbow-III-Compressed features similar levels of security to 128-bit AES symmetric encryption models. It would take modern computers 10^26 years to break 128-bit symmetric key encryption using brute force, which is 200 times greater than the age of our universe.

The public key sizes of PQC cryptography are larger in comparison to standard non-PQC cryptography. Nevertheless large sizes of public keys are not what makes them resistant to quantum computers; rather, it is the algorithms they involve.

Standard non-PQC asymmetric cryptography, even with very large public keys, can easily be broken by quantum computers. This happens because Shor’s algorithm requirements of time is linear to the size of the public key. In the case of standard computers, time requirements scale geometrically with the size of public keys.

For example, if a quantum computer requires 1 hour to break a public key of the size 256 bits, then it would need 2 hours to break 512 bits encryption. This is not case for standard computers. If a standard computer could break 256 bits encryption with 1 hour, then for it to break 512 bits encryption would require 2^256 hours, so 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 hours

The size of the public key of Rainbow-III-Compressed cryptography used in QUAD™ is 164kB.

A consensus mechanism is a predefined ruleset that defines how distributed participants (i.e nodes) should reach agreement about what transactions appear on the chain.

QUAD leverages a proprietary consensus model called Proof-of-Synergy, which combines the best features of contemporary models like Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and Proof-of-Authority (PoA) into one system. This enables the QUAD to be environmentally friendly, resistant to DDoS attacks, and fully decentralized with a very high transaction throughput rate, in addition to being resistant to attack from quantum computers.

QUAD is operated and secured by a distributed network of nodes, who together perform the job of adding and validating new transactions.

In QUAD’s consensus model, 128 nodes compete to be the first to solve a Proof-of-Work algorithm (as in Bitcoin). The first node to successfully solve this algorithm is then responsible for the creation of a new block, while all other nodes check that the new block is valid.

Block rewards of main chain is hyperbolically diminished with time.

Block reward

It is calculated as follows:

Block Reward = 1317.70833 * 0.999^n

where n equals the rough number of days from inception (one day is about 8,640 blocks)

and x^n means x to the power of n.

Block rewards for the side chain behaves in the same manner as on the main chain. Please look at above question `How are block rewards for the main chain calculated?`.

No. Only users who staked coins to a delegated account (node) that creates a valid block are rewarded. Rewards are sent to these accounts proportionally to staked values.

Each delegated account will have an operator. The operator will be responsible for the administration of the physical server on which the node is running.

The operator of the node defines the percentage of the reward from block creations that they will claim. The percentage can be anywhere from 0% to 50%.

There will be competition within nodes to attract staked accounts. If the operator of a delegated account claims too much of the reward, then users will choose to deposit their funds in another account.

Any participant is eligible to be an operator on any given delegated account. Participants need to signal their intent to become operators. The participant with the largest stake will be declared the operator for any given delegated account. If 2 participants have an equal stake, then the participant that is fastest to signal their intent will be awarded operator status.

Every delegated account must have an operator in order to become a node.

256 delegate accounts will be created when the blockchain is first initiated. Anybody who is interested in staking (mining) needs to send QAD to one of these accounts.

The top 128 delegate accounts in terms of QAD holding will act as nodes and validators. So out of the 256 delegate accounts in QUAD, only 128 will act as nodes and the remainder will remain sidelined until they have a large enough QAD deposit and thus can join the top 128 delegators.

256 delegated accounts will be pre-created before the genesis block, but only the top 128 delegated accounts in amount of staked coins can server as a nodes and validators.

Users can deposit QAD in any of the 256 delegated accounts, as long as they deposit a minimum of 1,000 QAD.

The number of delegated accounts is 256 and the number of nodes is up to 128.

Some of delegated accounts will be on a waiting list in order to have the possibility of replacing a node with the smallest number of staked coins. Gathering staking needs some time, so one needs available delegated accounts in the case when all 128 accounts will only just be occupied by nodes.

Yes.

Withdrawing coins from one of delegated accounts (unstaking) can be done at any time, and there is no fixed deposit period.

Withdrawing or depositing QAD to delegated accounts needs to be confirmed with 36 confirmations (about 6 minutes) in order to be valid.