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At the recent European Ethereum Development Conference, the founder of Qtum, Shuai Chu, announced a good news that "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver is also a follower and investor of Qtum. When talking about Qtum, Roger commented: "Qtum is definitely one of the projects everyone should be keeping their eye on." Subsequently, Bitcoin.com published an exclusive interview with Qtum, discussing with Shuai Chu, the co-founder of Qtum, the technical details of how Qtum combines the Bitcoin UTXO model with the Ethereum virtual machine. Shuai Chu elaborated on the details of the Qtum project and said that the goal of Qtum is to continue to build a basic platform, develop various products, and develop and iterate commercial projects, gradually forming a blockchain economy, improving industry efficiency, and promoting efficient and coordinated development of society. Bitcoin.com (BC): Could you briefly explain the Qtum Foundation and the Qtum project to our readers? Shuai Chu: Qtum is the first POS smart contract platform based on the UTXO model. It can achieve compatibility between the Bitcoin ecosystem and the Ethereum ecosystem. Through the mobile strategy, it promotes the productization of blockchain technology and improves the usability of the blockchain industry, aiming to connect the real business world with the blockchain world. Therefore, Qtum is a comprehensive blockchain application platform. The Qtum Foundation is the highest decision-making body of the Qtum project, with its headquarters in Singapore. Qtum draws on the essence of Bitcoin and Ethereum and discards the dross of both, making it easy for Qtum to deploy any Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), while also facilitating the migration of Ethereum DAPPs to Qtum.
BC: Quantum Chain uses Bitcoin client version 0.13 and Ethereum Virtual Machine. What are the considerations behind this? Shuai Chu: The Bitcoin network has been running safely for 8 years, and its total market value has reached 16 billion US dollars. These facts have verified the security of the underlying Bitcoin code. Therefore, we chose the Bitcoin core code and added a newly designed "account abstraction layer" to the design of the Quantum chain, so that the Bitcoin UTXO model can run on the EVM. In addition, we have added three new opcodes to the Qtum code to facilitate EVM execution and manipulation of various parameters in the UTXO model. Some people may ask, “Why redesign a smart contract platform when there is already a successful design like Ethereum?” The answer is "parallelism". Ethereum's "linear" design concept cannot process multiple smart contracts in "parallel". Therefore, we refer to the design of Ethereum and add the contract parallel processing capability on the Qtum platform. It is better to learn from others than to work in isolation. Although Qtum provides a comprehensive solution, we do not want to have two code bases that are incompatible with each other. Therefore, Qtum is designed so that a large number of platforms based on the UTXO model, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc., can work with Qtum after a small modification. In addition, supporting BIP is also a "must". All transaction information is recorded on the blockchain, and we do not want to see two confirmed blocks for the same transaction. The security features of the UTXO model, such as payment to script hash (P2SH) and multi-signature, can effectively prevent forks and double spending. Of course, in addition to the reasons mentioned above, using the more mature EVM will allow our development team to focus more on the development of other core functions of the Quantum chain and improve the sustainability of our project.
BC: Do you think smart contracts will become widely used in the near future? Shuai Chu: In my opinion, many enterprises will use blockchain smart contracts to automate processes. In the past few years, many industries have begun to explore the application of blockchain technology. We firmly believe that the Qtum platform can accelerate the pace of enterprise blockchain deployment, rather than just staying at the proof-of-concept stage. Once enterprise-level blockchain smart contracts are deployed in large quantities, more user-oriented blockchain applications will emerge.
BC: Can you explain the “Master Contract”? Shuai Chu: In order to facilitate mainstream commercial applications, we added oracle and data feeds to the smart contract to form "master control and active". In this way, the introduction of off-chain data has changed the operation mode and life cycle of previous smart contracts.
BC: It is reported that the Qtum team recently received support from a "big shot" in the cryptocurrency circle. Can you reveal more details? Shuai Chu: Yes, Quantum Chain has received support from Roger Ver, a famous Bitcoin entrepreneur. Roger is called "Bitcoin Jesus" by the media for his unique and bold Bitcoin investment experience. Roger's support provides a strong endorsement for the Quantum Chain project. We have reason to believe that the development of Quantum Chain will push the entire blockchain community forward.
In addition, we have received strong support from Ethereum founder Anthony Di Iorio, Distributed Fund partner Shen Bo, OKCoin CEO Xu Mingxing, Kuaidi founder Chen Weixing and many other industry leaders.
BC: Why did Qtum choose the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism? Shuai Chu: In the initial design phase of the basic architecture of the quantum chain, we conducted rigorous analysis and in-depth discussions on this issue. Jordan Earls, the core developer of the team, even wrote a new PoW algorithm. We spent a lot of time discussing whether PoW can meet our design requirements and whether its ASIC resistance is sufficient to fight against centralized hash power? In addition, we have learned from companies in different industries that using mining to maintain network stability is not a good option, and corporate users do not want to spend a lot of energy and time to figure out how PoW works. We believe that inefficient mining should not have a negative impact on the efficiency of blockchain technology. As we deepen our communication with financial institutions, logistics providers, and manufacturers, we are more and more convinced of the powerful advantages of using the PoS consensus mechanism. The application direction of the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism model is explained in detail in the "PoS White Paper". The original version of the Sunny King protocol had some potential security vulnerabilities, and the Quantum Chain team made a lot of bug fixes and added incentives to encourage nodes to continue to be online to obtain more rewards, rather than placing tokens on exchanges for trading or accumulating coin age. In a nutshell, the efficiency and security of PoS made us finally choose PoS as the consensus mechanism of the Qtum chain.
BC: Can you explain Sparknet? Shuai Chu: Spark Network is the testing environment for the core applications of Qtum. We modified the Bitcoin Core programming language in Spark Network and added the Account Abstraction Layer, thus completing the integration of Bitcoin Core Code 0.13, Ethereum Virtual Machine and PoS consensus mechanism. In addition, Qtum tokens will also be tested in Spark Network. We will also test the main applications, contract execution and other scenarios in Spark Network and fix system bugs. Spark Network will be released within a few months after the public sale begins.
BC: Does Qtum have a comprehensive vulnerability detection and repair mechanism for smart contracts to avoid the recurrence of incidents similar to The DAO? Shuai Chu: We detect and fix vulnerabilities in the following two ways: First, before the contract is deployed on the Quantum Chain, it will undergo comprehensive, systematic, and semantic design method-based testing to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the code; second, the Quantum Chain will establish a smart contract center to provide standardized smart contract templates for various industries, such as supply chain management, communications, the Internet of Things, social networks, etc., for developers to refer to.
BC: Last question, what is the ultimate goal of the Quantum Chain Foundation? Shuai Chu: The Quantum Chain Foundation recently released a 32-page "Quantum Chain Blockchain Economic White Paper". In the white paper, we clearly explained the goals of the Quantum Chain Foundation - within four years, the Quantum Chain Foundation will gradually transform into a non-profit organization and completely hand over the Quantum Chain platform to the community for self-management.
The Foundation will safeguard the promotion and development of the Quantum Chain project in the initial stage and provide a sound governance environment, rather than "controlling" the development of the project.
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