Qtum cryptocurrency review: history, technology, mining, pros and cons of the project

What is Qtum in simple words?

Qtum is an open source PoS consensus blockchain platform. In its work, the project uses the Bitcoin transaction model, but with the added flexibility of smart contracts.

QTUM is a platform token of the same name used to pay for the implementation of the same smart contracts. Quite often it is used when interacting with the platform, that is, to provide network security, as well as for management activities on the platform.

For organizations and developers, there is a special QTUM token standard - QRC-20, which can also be used in decentralized applications (dApps).

By whom and when was QTUM developed? Developers and co-founders of the project

The Qtum project was founded in 2016. Behind its creation is a very strong team of developers who worked in well-known and large companies in the world, such as Alibaba, Nasdaq, Tencent and Baidu.

The project is led by:

• Patrick Dai is a master of computer science, he received his education in China. For a long time he worked as the technical director of VeChain, as well as at Bitse Group (China), which is engaged in bitcoin mining. After a while, he became interested in the Qtum project, becoming one of the co-founders of the Qtum Foundation project.
• Jordan Earls is a software developer with a long history, having been programming since the age of 13. Jordan is president of Earl Gray Tech and co-chair of Smart Contracts Allianc. Lead Developer at Qtum Foundation.
• Neil Mahi is an MBA. 20 years programming experience and 4 years he is interested in the blockchain area.

The project has good support from venture investors, which includes both major players in the Chinese technology market and blockchain specialists, for example, Anthony Di Iorio (founder of Ethereum and CEO of JaxxWallet), Chen Weixing (founder of Kuaidi), Jeremy Gardner (one of founders of Augur) and others.

Initially, the team issued 100,000,000 tokens in 2017. But in March of the same year, an ICO was held, as a result of which 51,000,000 coins were purchased, with a total value of 15,600,000 million in BTC and ETH. About 8,000,000 were bought by private investors, another 12,000,000 remained with the project team. 13,400,000 QTUM tokens are currently under the control of the Qtum Chain Foundation.

The main network of the project was launched to the masses on September 13, 2017.

Technology

Qtum works on a mixed blockchain, that is, the components of two blockchains are used simultaneously - bitcoin and ethereum.

From Bitcoin, Kutum took the transaction confirmation method, called UTXO, in view of the fact that it is by far the most effective. Using UTXO, you can avoid double write-offs of assets, which is very common with other methods of confirming transactions.

In addition, the UTXO model was chosen taking into account its scalability, as it makes it possible to verify several transactions at the same time, without taking into account the sequence of entering balances into the blockchain.

But the choice of this model could not pass without some difficulties, so the Qtum developers were faced with the need to integrate UTXO into the Ethereum. According to the technical documentation, this is unrealistic, but they succeeded by applying the “Account Abstraction Layer” function (this is an algorithm that converts UTXO into account balances, so they become compatible with Ethereum), which made it possible to combine UTXO Bitcoin and Ethereum EVM.

Mining Qtum

Mining Qtum is possible and this does not even require super-power and investment in equipment, because Qtum is based on the PoS (Proof-of-Stake) 3.0 algorithm version.

The mining algorithm is slightly different from the mining of other cryptocurrencies that also use PoS. This difference is that a certain “random effect” plays the final role, but not the number of coins that are held.

Any of the QTUM tokens that are in the user's crypto wallet are similar in their functions to lottery tickets, since any of them can give that small chance to create a new block.

At the time of writing, the block mining reward is 0.5 QTUM.

Advantages and disadvantages of QTUM

Qtum is one of the popular and trending cryptocurrencies. It has a large number of advantages that distinguish it from the background of other cryptocoins:

• a set of positive aspects from two top cryptocurrencies - bitcoin and ethereum;
• availability of mining;
• the ability to deploy smart contracts via a smartphone;
• the network can be used even on phones or tablets;
• support for several programming languages allows you to create smart contracts very quickly;
• community members can take part in voting for changes on the platform;
• the team has a clear strategy, without changing which, they move step by step;
• free exchange;
• rapid rate increase.

Well, even though there are practically no disadvantages for cryptocurrency, we still found a few of them:

• the media has significant influence;
• Ethereum developers have doubts about the effectiveness of UTXO + EVM, which we wrote about above, but on the example of Qtum, it works perfectly;
• against the background of the rapid growth of the exchange rate, which we have designated as the positive side of the coin, it can also be a minus in the same way, because you can lose a lot of money on strong volatility;
• not every crypto owner can appreciate the real value and idea of Qtum, the project developers believe;
• to some extent, the activity of Patrick Day (one of the co-founders), who previously worked in the BitBay crypto trading platform, whose founder accused him of stealing 20,000 BTC, can be called a minus in the reputation of the platform, but no evidence has been found.

Cooperation

Despite the fact that the Qtum project is still quite young, big players in the market have begun to cooperate with them:

Amazon. The Qtum cryptocurrency has been added to Amazon AWS (blockchain platform), where anyone can interact with various cryptocurrencies, in particular with Kutum.

Oath. The protocol of this organization can be implemented in the Qtum blockchain, which resolves disputes within the network itself and can give users a new level of security.

Celer network. This organization has released a protocol of the same name, by implementing which Qtum will be able to provide even greater network scalability.

Course and capitalization. Where can I buy and how do I store Qtum?

At the time of writing, the QTUM price is $3.15 and the market capitalization is $327,789,263.

Now QTUM shows a fairly stable rate, which cannot be said about sharp jumps a few years ago. The coin showed the highest price, in fact, like many altcoins, at the beginning of 2018, then it was trading at the rate of 106.88 US dollars.

QTUM is a very popular coin, so it is sold and bought on most well-known cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, Huobi, OKex, Upbit, Poloniex and others. It can also be found in the lists of exchange pairs of online crypto exchangers.

QTUM is often exchanged for such cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether.

In order to keep their savings in Qtum, the project team created their own wallets:

• Qtum Core and Qtum Electrum - for PC;
• Qtum Core - for mobile;
• Ignition Mainnet is an online wallet.

In addition to these wallets, specifically for mobile, you can take wallets from other developers, for example, QBao and Bitpie.

Development prospects

Cryptocoin Qtum is a modern and unique coin, the developers of which were able to combine all the best from two popular cryptocurrencies - ethereum and bitcoin. The coin is designed not only for individuals, but also for legal entities, which elevates it against the background of other coins. And although the project is young, there are already a couple of projects that want to launch on the Kutum platform - Space Chain, MediBloc, Energo, CFun, Halal Chain, BitClave, Qbao.

The seriousness of the intentions of the creators of the coin and its further development are evidenced by the speed and interest of the work of the entire team, because in just 6 months after the ICO, the main version of the network was released, as well as the official crypto wallets of the platform.

Whether the developers will continue to follow their Roadmap, we will be able to observe in the near future. You can follow the development of the project on the official website of the platform - qtum.org.