QuarkChain × Binance English Community AMA Summary
On August 25, 11:00 pm PST/August 26, 6:00 am UTC, QuarkChain and Binance English community co-held an AMA together. The AMA started with about 8,500 people online and ended with 10,100 people online!
QuarkChain Founder & CEO Dr. Zhou attended the AMA and answered the questions from the Binance English Community. Richie from Binance hosted the AMA for 90min. The AMA received thousands of questions, and during the rewarded quiz section, nearly 4000 responses were received.
Here is a recap of the Live AMA.
Q&A
Binance En Community:
Please tell us a bit about QuarkChain. We are all anxious to hear and learn more.
Dr. Zhou:
QuarkChain is the next-generation blockchain that is built on top of heterogeneous sharding technology.
With our customized heterogeneous sharding, our goal is to offer highly flexibility, scalability, and user-friendly!
So what is heterogeneous sharding? To understand that, we should know what are the components of a single chain vs. multi-chain (like sharding).
We know a single chain is a combination of: 1, consensus; 2, ledger model; 3, tx model; and 4, token economics.
E.g., BTC is using PoW+UXTO+halving 4 years
When it comes to multi-chain, like a lot of sharding projects such as ETH2.0/ZIL (shard == a special chain), the design so that each shard chain must follow the same consensus/ledger/tx model and token eco.
And for us, we allow different shards running different consensus/ledger/tx model and token eco!
To our best knowledge, Polkadot is one of the best in this area — but it still requires each shard chain to run the same consensus.
In addition, we also proposed the function of multi-native tokens. Users can create their native tokens (not ERC20-like tokens). The user-created native tokens enjoy almost the same rights as QKC — our default native token.
They can transfer directly, call contracts, move between chains, and even pay as a transaction fee directly! Most of the non-native asset safety/scalability/user-friendly problems faced by Defi can be efficiently solved by native tokens!
Finally, we are happy to be debut-listed by Binance in 2018 — one of a few projects at that time.
Now our mainnet has launched for more than 1 year, and everything is working well!
Binance En Community:
Question No.1
You mentioned sharding in the introduction. I guess everyone is familiar with this word. ETH2.0 has been talking about sharding. Last year, the two IEO projects Elrond and Harmony on our Binance platform also did sharding. Polkadot, which will be launched this year, is doing sharding. Even the old project Zil is too. So what is the difference between QuarkChain’s sharding and theirs? Where is the advantage?
Dr. Zhou:
Great question!
Let me give a picture of comparisons.
At the same time, we have also prepared a short video to introduce the differences between heterogeneous sharding and others.
Here I would like to highlight 2 things: 1, one is heterogenous sharding; 2, second is that we have launched the network for more than 1 year.
To further illustrate heterogenous sharding, I could use our traffic system as an example:
…imagine a single chain network like EOS, Tezos, Cardano is like a one-way highway (BTC may be a muddy road ….)
Sharding is like a highway with multiple ways — all the ways are the same (each chain must have the same consensus/tx-ledger model/token eco). But it must be cars/trucks running on it, not bicycles or people walking.
Heterogeneous sharding is more like our traffic system — people with cars such as Lambo can enjoy highways or local ways, while people with bicycles can use local ways (and of course, people can also walk).
This allows us to harvest all kinds of latest blockchain technologies, PoS/PoW/UTXO/ZK-SNARK, etc.
Furthermore, one cool thing we built is that as long as the shard chains follow our cross-shard protocol, they can talk to each other easily — Imagine a privacy shard chain transfers some tokens to another EVM-like chain and vice versa.
One even interesting network we build is to run public/consortium shard chains in the single network — the consortium shard chain can be permissioned (but can be used following regulation easier), while the public shard chain is permissionless.
Heterogeneous sharding opens a lot of opportunities, and we sincerely invite our community to join and explore together with us!
Binance En Community:
Question No.2
Polkadot is very popular these days. In its white paper, it mentions that it supports heterogeneous sharding, too. What is the difference between QuarkChain and Polkadot’s heterogeneous sharding? Can you tell me the difference between QuarkChain and other similar projects like Polkadot and Cosmos, etc.?
Dr. Zhou:
Excellent question!
There are several similarities between us and Polkadot.
First of all, both our focus on shared security — a very important feature in the blockchain.
As we saw that a lot of projects (ETC/BTG) were attacked because they have to maintain their security only.
Shared security means that all sub-chains (shards) can be protected by the main chain (root chain in QuarkChain or relay chain in Polkadot).
So that the sub-chain can focus on their specialties — security, high performance, DeFi, bridge, smart contract, etc.
However, the major difference is that in QuarkChain, all shard chains can have their consensus (PoW/PoA/PoS), while Polkadot still enforces all parachains using their consensus.
This means that QuarkChain can have better flexibility here.
Another is the cross-shard protocol, which we have been running for more than one year (and Near is using part of the protocol), while Polkadot’s ICMP seems to just start.
Here is the summary.
If you are interested in what are the parameters of shard chains and test our cross-shard transactions, please visit our mainnet http://mainnet.quarkchain.io/ and have a try!
Binance En Community:
Question No.3
What is the future trend of DeFi, in your opinion? What is the biggest flaw DeFi is facing today? And is QuarkChain looking to solve the problem?
Dr. Zhou:
We believe DeFi is a very important application of blockchain and it has a lot of unique values.
We are very optimistic about DeFi and have been working on DeFi for a while.
However, we believe the biggest flaw is that our blockchain platform is not designed for this (I am saying ETH), and thus can be a bottleneck of this trend as we observed.
To be more specific, we found a couple of challenges:
1, Security issues; 2, Low scalability; 3, Bad user experiences
1. For security issues, we found several issues rooted from the nature that the platform (ETH) uses ERC20 to represent assets, where ERC20 can cause a lot of problems.
First of all, the security problems caused by non-standard ERC20 (for example, 25M USD stolen from lendf.me is because of such vulnerability.)
Second, because of the constraints of ERC20, before using the asset to join DeFi, everyone needs to approve some amounts of user assets (likely infinite) to the DeFi contract so that the DEFI contract can transfer user’s token on THE BEHAVE OF USERS!
Here is a graph illustrating this.
This means that if a DeFi contract is hacked, the attacker can steal not only the DeFi contract’s assets, BUT ALSO the assets under the users’ names (you wallet is your pocket :( ).
Earlier this year, Bancor had a similar problem, and through a white hat attack, it attacked itself and recovered nearly 0.5M losses.
2. Scalability — Gas fee is exploding these days, and I believe everybody is suffering from it. However, being able to move ERC20 between shards is still an open question in most sharding projects.
3. User experience. Users have to pay the tx fees using ETH, but not a token issued by the DeFi. This raises the bar of users joining DeFi.
QuarkChain is designed from scratch targeting to solve all these problems! Together with our heterogeneous sharding + multi-native tokens, we could achieve:
- Very low gas with high TPS: 1/10 or 1/100 lower gas compared to ETH
- Much safer: No ERCO20 approval means that the user’s assets will never be able to be transferred by a malicious contract!
- Pay any native token as gas: Users can use the native token to pay the gas fee (Imagine using a USD-backed asset to pay fee :) )
I firmly believe with all the features, we could bring a lot of values to DeFi applications and enable further DeFi prosperity!
Binance En Community:
Question No.4
It sounds excellent that QuarkChain wants to use its unique heterogeneous sharding + multi-native toke technologies to solve the current DeFi problems. Could you let us know that as the users, what products can we experience for the next-generation DeFi network developed by QuarkChain?
Dr. Zhou:
Instead of typing, we would love to demonstrate the features and collect more feedback from you!
To let everyone experience the security and the ease-of-use of the next generation of DeFi, with multi-native tokens + sharding, we started an event called Game of Defi.
We also offer a 5M QKC bonus pool to invite everyone to have a taste of future DeFi!
Phase I: Prologue — QuarkChain 3rd Bounty Program, which already started on Aug 14th. You can join the QuarkChain 3rd Bounty Program in this phase and share the 5 million $QKC reward pool!
Bounty Program here:
From 8/23 to 8/26, our transaction game is going on. Now you still have hours to participate in the game.
I highly recommend these community members who have a big amount of Twitter followers to take our transaction challenge, because you have a chance to monetize your influence into big $QKC rewards!
Learn more about the transaction game from the following short video. You will experience how to use the native token to pay the gas fee directly!
Binance En Community:
Question No.5
We know that the majority of the assets stay on the Ethereum blockchain today, and all public chains are facing such a problem: even solving the problems faced by DeFi, how can the public chain solve the problem that there are no assets on these public chains? What is the relationship between the public chain and Ethereum in the future? Competition or cooperation?
Dr. Zhou:
It is indeed a problem we have to or a lot of public chain projects face.
QuarkChain’s solution in the 2nd half of the year is to build an asset bridge to allow Ethereum assets transferred to our chain.
In this way, every user can use ERC20 assets directly linked to QuarkChain multi-native tokens, and use the multi-native tokens to participate in our DApp.
we can directly swap ERC20 into our multi-native tokens, and the multi-native tokens can be directly used to pay for gas fees in transactions.
E.g., swapping USDT ERC20 on us with QUSDT name (actually our community member bid this name in our DeFi event)
Now, users on us can use QUSDT to transfer cross-shard and pay tx fee using QUSDT.
Binance En Community:
Question No.6
Besides these exciting DeFi products, can you tell us the most significant focuses for QuarkChain in the coming half year?
Dr. Zhou:
Sure.
We plan to launch an open-source DApp with the functions of staking V2 in Q3, which will allow more users to join the staking feature of us.
If you are interested in staking, you could first take a look at our Staking 1.0 doc:
The 2nd is the mainnet of BigBang with the multi-native token function that will be officially launched in Q3.
For information for the 2nd half of 2020 is here:
Lastly, we are building an enterprise solution on top of QuarkChain.
We have finished several enterprise corporations in the H1 of 2020: the Environmental Governance Platform on Blockchain and the in-depth technical cooperation with Amazon Web Service (AWS).
The Environmental Governance Platform on Blockchain launched by QuarkChain provides a well-planned system that uses heterogeneous sharding to avoid the need to relaunch a new chain for each expansion as it allows customized configuration of four basic components of blockchain, which are consensus, transaction model, ledger model, and token economics, and thus different shards can be added when facing different needs.
You can learn more about the Environmental Governance Platform on Blockchain here:
In the next half year, we have planned more Enterprise opportunities and will be happy to share once we have more!
LIVE AMA
@Washincha:
Is it possible to create my own? What’s the process? And also can I use my Own token to pay gas fee? If yes then how will it’s determine my token value?
Dr. Zhou:
For the native token bidding process, you can bid a token with your name preferred. Once you successfully bid the token, you could mint it as long as you own it. To pay gas fee, anyone is able to set up a trade-pair in our system contract (like Uniswap), and when a user submits a tx with your token, it will be automatically converted to QKC by the system contract :)
@bluesky6973
What is difficulities and chances that QuarkChain face right now while crypto/blockchain market is still young and need time to grow?
Dr. Zhou:
The major difficulty is the fluctuation of the market, but it becomes better. I believe the market will have more professional investors and players and make the market greater!
@Riad12341234:
What is Staking 2.0? Can you explain me the Utility of staking 2.0 in Quark Chain?
The keyword is delegate — anyone could delegate the tokens to us and we mine and reward back to users. We have the infra structure ready, but a bit more time to test :)
Dr. Zhou:
The keyword is delegate — anyone could delegate the tokens to us and we mine and reward back to users. We have the infra structure ready, but a bit more time to test :)
@drzy16:
The Environmental ‘’Governance’’ Platform on Blockchain is really a big use case for ‘QuarkChain’. Could you share in details to us? Are you developing on it right now? Why they choose ‘QuarkChain’, not other blockchain platforms?
Dr.Zhou:
The reason that the project wants to build on top of us is the flexibility — imagine a lot of organizations with different state or city levels want to join, current blockchain model has great limitation, and QuarkChain’s heterogenous sharding is what they want :)
@devidsinger1:
Many DeFi projects have been attacked by hackers. How Quarkchain can gain the trust of future investors and demonstrate that the security they use is the most profitable?
Dr.Zhou:
Security is the main problem and for us, the solution is standard native token instead of ERC20. There are several other issues such as reentrancy that native token can also address easier.
@Nathan527:
How do you plan to spread awareness about your project in different countries where English is not spoken well? Do you have local communities for them to let them better understand about your project?
Dr.Zhou:
We do put a lot of effort into global-wise. E.g., we have dedicated Korea office and we plan to open more in EUR in the near future :)
@Nathan527:
What are the benefits of joining mining? Why difficulty for chain 1 higher than before?
Dr.Zhou:
The reason is our special PoSW consensus (Proof of Staked Work). You see the difficulty high on-chain 1 is because people still have a lot of in chain 1 and as a result of staking, a miner with stake can miner more efficiently (and thus the difficulty increases). If you check the post-staked difficulty, it is not so high — the gain is about 2x of ETH and it can be more (even 100x) if you could stake more.
Please check http://www.qpool.net/#/home for the list.
@februari4:
Why does QKC coin focus on the POSW consensus mechanism?
Dr. Zhou:
The reason is that we want to invite both miners and stakers to contribute to the network together instead of PoS and PoW fighting with each other.
@Jomshad11:
we saw the picture that you chatted with Vitalik, What did you discuss？
Dr. Zhou:
Chat a lot of, especially convincing him to work with QKC :) Actually, we are discussing modern consensus (BFT) and how it works :)
@chino12yap
Since Quarkchain Network is already running, are there already projects using the network? If not, when?
Dr. Zhou:
If you talk about DApps, actually a lot of community members are deploying contracts for mining (so that they can have a pool). For DeFi products, we will release one together with our DeFi event soon (Phase 3)
@zafermetin:
How will heterogeneous sharding achieve high TPS and low gas cost? The high cost of the ETH gas fee is a seemingly minor but major problem. Is it possible to cover the gas cost with the QuarkChain local token?
There are 4 core issues prevalent in crypto and blockchain: Excessive Volatility, Security, Scalability and Interoperability. How do QuarkChain Network plan to overcome these issues?
Dr.Zhou:
That is the plan. With more than 10K+ or 100K TPS, we believe the cost can be greatly lower and encourage a lot of DeFi applications :)
Congratulations to the following community members’ questions for being selected：
@Washincha Md Shãđìquł Islãm
@bluesky6973 Jack Mei
@Riad12341234 Riad
@drzy16 Rembrandt Lucky
@devidsinger1 Devid Singar
@Nathan527 Nathan
@februari4 Cibui
@Jomshad11 Jomshad Ali
@chino12yap Chino Yap
@zafermetin Zafer Metin
The Quiz winner list is still under consolidating. Stay tuned with us on:
https://twitter.com/Quark_Chain
Learn more about QuarkChain
Website https://www.quarkchain.io
Telegram https://t.me/quarkchainio
Twitter https://twitter.com/Quark_Chain
Medium https://medium.com/quarkchain-official
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/quarkchainio/
Community https://community.quarkchain.io/
