Quarkchain - scaling via sharding

In physics, Quark is the term use to call the fundamental constituents of the nucleon (the basic ingredience of atom). A quark is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter.

So is quarkchain aiming to solve current blockchain issues by going back to the fundamental core values of the blockchain?

In their own words, the white papers says “quarkchain is an innovative permissionless blockchain architecture that aims to meet the global-wise commercial standard” .

The team targets to deliver solutions 3rd generation blockchain technology that can scale up to 1Million on-chain Transaction Per Second (TPS) by using two layer sharding tehnology (Root chain and sharding layer). Their solution will also be compatible with existing Ethereum smart contract codes meaning easy onboarding for existing dApps. The values of the team are guided by usability (fast, simple), decentralization (public participation), safety (reliable).

What is sharding :
Currently, every single node running the Ethereum or bitcoin network has to process every single transaction that goes through the network. This gives the blockchain a high amount of security because of how much validation goes into each block, but at the same time it means that an entire blockchain is only as fast as its individual nodes and not the sum of their parts. This means that the TPS of the bitcoin is limited at around 3-5 tps or 10-15 tps for ethereum

With sharding, the entire state of the network is split into a bunch of partitions called shards that contain their own independent piece of state and transaction history. For quarkchain there will be an elastic sharding blockchain layer, which process a sub-set of all transactions independently. The higher the number of shards, the more transactions can the system process concurrently.
In addition to the sharding layer, 50% of the hash power will be dedicated for the root chain which is use for confirming all blocks from sharded blockchains. The rootchain does not process any transactions but has sufficiently strong difficulty so that transaction cannot be reverted to prevent double spending attack.

Sharding issues tackled :

1. cross-shard transaction – need to address the issue where the input and output address are in different shards. Quarkchain allows users to issue any cross-shard transaction at any time that can be confirmed in minutes.
2. security issue like single shard takeover and further scalability issues – with the dilation of hash power, eg a malicious attacked could easily perform a double-spending attack on one of the blockchain. Since Quarkchain dedicates 50% of hash power to the root chain, a double spending attack requires at least 25% hash power.
3. Cross shard multiple accounts – One simple account management to allow one private key for all transaction across any shards. Primary account for use in a default shard and secondary account to manage the rest of the user’s addresses in the other shards.

Tokenomics for quarkchain

1. Value carrier - Use for transfer of value like bitcoin / ethereum
2. Transaction currency - use as transaction fee to pay for value transfer and for executing smart contract
3. Contribution reward – use as an incentive to promote the continuous development of the ecosystem.

Mobile focused development – With the increasing smart phone penetration rate globally, providing mobile oriented developer tools will be one of the goals of the team. The team will allocate a portion of the funds for developers to adopt and build their mobile DApps on Quarkchain. Possbile application includes social network, online storage, gaming and sharing economic platform.

Timeline :

Roadmap leading up to Q1’19
Mainnet expected to be launch in Q4’18
Current Testnet of 2.2K TPS is already available

Allstars team
Team is based in San Francisco and consists of researchers, scientists, product marketers and COO. The founder is Qi Zhou which is an ex-googler with 15 years experience. The rest of the team members are all Chinese that study and work in the US including Google, Facebook and Georgia Tech.

ICO Token Sale Info :
Public sale : hard cap $4M , 1ETH = 31533 QKC
Private sale (closed) hard cap $16M , 1ETH = 39416 QKC (25% bonus) . 10% release each month for 4 months, 20% /month for next 3 months.
Total 10 Billion QKC
Token distribution :
20% - public & private sale
15% - team , lockup to 2 years
15% - foundation , lockup to 2 years
5% - foundation , lockup to 2 years
45% - mining, community & marketing
How to enrol :
Need to join quarkchain telegram , currently with about 84K users. http://t.me/quarkchainio
Perform KYC process , obtain KYC access code via quark_kyc_bot . Dateline for KYC is 11:59PM (GMT-7) 20th May 2018
Next stage : partake in a quiz with question related to quarkchain .
Chance to participate in ICO to be graded on a 100 point scale :

1. Time to join telegram group. The earlier to join the higher the score – 30%
2. Quiz on understanding of quarkchain – 50%
3. Submission for contribution to project – 20%
   Only people above 60% will be allowed to enter the lottery pool for the public allocation. System will whitelist minimum 5K users.

https://steemit.com/quarkchain/@quarkchain/kyc-explanation