QUANTSTAMP (QSP) REVIEW - Cost-effective, Secure and Automated auditing process for Smart-Contracts

SUMMARY

• Website: https://quantstamp.com/
• White paper: https://docsend.com/view/shcsmhe
• Hard cap: US$30 million (public crowdsale ICO contributors own 65% of total token supply if hard cap is reached)
• Presale is based on 3 tiers of proof-of-caring: Tier 1: 50% bonus, Tier 2: 40% bonus, Tier 3: 20% bonus.
• Crowdsale: 1 ETH = 5000QSP
• Hardcap: $30,000,000 USD (Contributors own 65% of total supply)

OVERVIEW

Currently, smart contracts are not secure and companies often have to hire smart contract auditors and consultants. These services are often expensive, slow, error-prone and scarce.

Quantstamp aims to solve this by building the first smart contract security-auditing protocol that will be timely, automated and cost-effective. This is achieved by an automated and upgradeable software verifications system and an automated bounty payout system.

TOKEN UTILITY

The native token QSP is used to pay or receive rewards for auditing services.

Below is the list of the different type of participants:

• Contributors (security experts) - Rewarded for contributing software and verifying solidity programs.
• Validators (contributors of computing power) - Rewarded for running the validation node.
• Bug finders - Rewarded for submitting bugs.
• Contract creators - Pay to get their smart contract verified.
• Contract users - Will receive the results of security audits
• Voters - To provide governance to the network. (voting for upgrades and reduces the chance of a fork and slowly decentralizes the founding team overtime).

More details on the architecture can be found in the whitepaper.

The network effect is present for QSP tokens. The more usage of the protocol has, the more valuable the tokens will be.

FUNDAMENTALS

Quantstamp solves a real problem that is currently hindering adoption of smart-contracts. The protocol will reduce the barriers to entries (costs and time) and may drive mainstream adoption of smart-contracts.

The Quantstamp team consists of 10 key members (still hiring) and have already provided a successful audit for Request Network's ICO raising ~$30 Million USD. This is a good indicator that the team have the ability to execute.

Quantstamp is also one of the few projects supported by YCombinator, a start-up accelerator who has funded over ~1450 projects including Request Network, Dropbox, Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe and Reddit.

If Ycombinator continues to support more blockchain projects in the coming years, we can speculate that Quantstamp will be the go-to smart-contract auditor which will help bootstrap the project.

Other supporters whom significance are unclear:Team in residence and Blockchain Partners Korea (partners with Kybernetwork), both are registered blockchain VC funds and accelerators.

The project is in the very early development stage and have limited functionalities, but can be used by auditors to replace some of the initial/basic manual work as it progresses.

VERDICT

Quantstamp tackles a real problem and may drive the adoption of smart-contracts by providing cost-effective, secure and automating the auditing process. Quantstamp is still in the very early stages and the mainnet won't be released until August 2018 which leaves a lot of uncertainties in-between. Unless you got into the pre-sale with 100% bonus, there's not much incentive to participate in the main-sale and may be better off waiting for the tokens to be listed on the exchange. We are currently neutral about the project, but will follow closely with the development and adoption of the protocol.