Quai Network

Quai builds directly on Bitcoin's design principles — Proof-of-Work security, UTXO transactions, and energy-backed scarcity — but adds a multi-chain hierarchy called merged mining. Every miner's single hash computation is simultaneously checked against Prime, Region, and Zone difficulty thresholds, so the entire network shares 100% of hash power without additional energy cost. The protocol also introduces PoEM consensus, which eliminates chain forks by selecting the block that removes the most entropy from the hash space, making consensus instant and objective.

No individual or governance vote sets the exchange rate. An on-chain K-Quai controller observes miner token choices over a rolling 4,000-block window and adjusts the convertibility rate using a logistic regression model with an alpha parameter of 1/1000. A cubic discount function prevents arbitrage: every conversion incurs a minimum 20 basis point slip, with penalties scaling cubically as volume rises relative to the network average. This creates a self-regulating monetary system without oracles, DAOs, or market makers.

At block 1,530,500, the Singularity Fork permanently burned roughly 1.67 billion QUAI — 81% of all future genesis unlocks — through a multilateral agreement between investors, Dominant Strategies, and the Quai Foundation. Post-fork, QUAI has a soft cap near 1.4 billion tokens, and net protocol emissions approach zero over time as Project SOAP's buyback-and-burn mechanism offsets mining rewards. The fork effectively removed the insider allocation overhang common in blockchain launches.

QI is not pegged to any fiat currency. Its emission rate is linearly proportional to mining difficulty, which directly reflects total network energy expenditure — making each unit a rough proxy for a constant amount of real-world energy cost. The protocol describes QI as a flatcoin: stable against thermodynamic cost rather than an arbitrary denomination. When QI trades above energy cost, supply expands until price falls; when below, holders convert to QUAI, contracting QI supply until price rises.

Yes. Quai supports SHA-256, Scrypt, and KawPow mining algorithms — the same standards used by Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ravencoin respectively. Through Project SOAP, miners submit workshares that fall below the full-block difficulty threshold and receive proportional rewards via Proportional Reward Splitting. The same computation that mines other chains simultaneously mines Quai, with miners able to lock QUAI rewards for up to 12 months to earn enhanced yields up to 25% APY with tradable Liquid Mining Tokens.

Quai was built by researchers and engineers from the University of Texas at Austin, Georgia Tech, Stanford, and Apple. The five named co-founders are Dr. K, Alan Orwick, Jonathan Downing, Professor Sriram Vishwanath, and Yanni Georghiades. The advisory panel includes Stephen Wolfram of Wolfram Research and Professor Cesare Fracassi, who leads the UT Austin Blockchain Initiative. The project rests on peer-reviewed research spanning consensus, reward allocation, and multi-chain coordination.

Coincident blocks — produced when a miner's hash meets difficulty thresholds for a Zone and its parent Region simultaneously — create deterministic, trustless bridges between chains. Cross-chain transactions are atomic: they either execute fully across all involved chains or not at all. Settlement takes roughly 30 seconds, compared with days for many traditional layer-2 bridges reliant on third-party relayers or centralized sequencers.