The Qtum Foundation (www.qtum.org), architects of the Qtum blockchain, which execute smart contracts with a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, today announced that one of the leading professional service providers PwC is supporting Qtum’s efforts to help fuel blockchain adoption across global business sectors. This includes providing comments on a white paper to be prepared by the project team, as well as on their proposed project governance structure. PwC is a network of firms in 157 countries, who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory, and tax services.
“PwC sees enormous potential for blockchain to revolutionize business practices as we know them, and the firm has made great efforts in developing strategic and technical capabilities to adapt existing products and services for the new technology. We are excited to get involved in the era of innovation and help companies capture the opportunities and benefits brought by the new technology. Working with the Qtum Foundation aligns with our goal,” said CY Cheung, Fintech and Cybersecurity Partner of PwC China.
Qtum’s governance structure, which is detailed in the Foundation’s Qtum Blockchain Economy Whitepaper, illustrates the level of professionalism PwC has brought to the team. Qtum’s management structure will allow the project to effectively take hold as one of the largest open-source blockchain projects that can meet the needs of financial services, Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain management, social media, gaming and other industries.
“The Qtum Project is committed to becoming a smart contracts platform for business. To do this, Qtum wants to make it feasible for industries to build practical applications on top of Qtum. Qtum envisions a future where business practices are automated, and machine-to-machine communication is seamless. Having PwC, who has broad expertise across industries and a global network, support Qtum will help us fulfill our mission,” added Patrick Dai, co-founder of the Qtum Project.
The Team behind Qtum
Qtum [pronounced Quantum] provides a Turing-complete blockchain stack, able to execute smart contracts and decentralized applications, comparable to the Ethereum blockchain. However, in contrast to Ethereum, Qtum is built upon Bitcoin’s well-established UTXO transaction model and employs a Proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. These augmentations have far-reaching implications for the utility of the Qtum blockchain, which will be elaborated below.
Furthermore, Qtum aims to establish an array of services, designed to bridge the still existing gap between blockchains and the business world. These include tools and methods to standardize the workflow of business smart contract development, and a hub of tested and verified smart contract templates, addressing various specialized business use-cases.
Advantages of Qtum’s blockchain design
Building on bitcoins reliable and proven-to-deliver blockchain, Qtum stacks its Account Abstraction Layer, allowing the UTXO-based blockchain to seamlessly interact with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). With this innovation it is now possible to execute smart contracts and run decentralized applications, simply and securely, in environments that were previously out of reach for Ethereum, combining the endless possibilities provided by smart contracts with the stability and maturity of the bitcoin ecosystem.
Going Mobile & A Blockchain Powered Internet of Things
One of the main advantages of Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) model is its ability to sustain lite wallets. Lite wallets, utilizing the SPV protocol, allow users to interact with the bitcoin network without having to download and sync with the entire blockchain.
This stands in stark contrast to the way the Ethereum blockchain operates. In order to engage with an Ethereum-based smart contract, one first has to download and sync the entire Ethereum blockchain, which to date weighs up to 30 GB – rendering the mobile use of decentralized applications infeasible.
On Qtum’s UTXO-based blockchain, however, it is now possible to interact with smart contracts from lite wallets, which can easily be installed on any given mobile device, heralding an age of mobile decentralized applications.
With about a half of all internet traffic to major sites being generated by mobile devices, this ability is absolutely necessary for a massive, mainstream adoption of decentralized applications (DApps), smart contracts and a p2p economy enabled by them.
Lite wallet access also allows the syncing of a variety of devices and appliances to the Qtum blockchain, operating them according to pre-determent smart contracts. With this, a blockchain-secured IoT can be established, enabling a trustless, decentralized Sharing Economy.
Compatibility across the board
Utilizing an EVM analog, the Qtum blockchain is compatible with existing ethereum-based smart contracts. Ethereum contracts can be ported to Qtum with little to no change to their code and execute as expected. Furthermore, Qtum implements complete backwards compatibility, meaning that once a decentralized application or contract is deployed on the Qtum network, it will stay operational, even if the system is updated.
With this, Qtum solves a huge problem, very well known to ethereum developers, who very often find their applications rendered useless by recurring changes to the Ethereum network.
The bitcoin-based UTXO transaction model also ensures that Qtum will be mostly compatible with the existing bitcoin ecosystem, allowing Qtum users to benefit from the industry’s top-notch innovations, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars already invested in the space.
Scalability, Speed, and Efficiency
Both, The Ethereum and the Bitcoin blockchain, are based on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which secures the blockchain by rendering attacks very costly due to artificially arduous computations, demanded from miners participating in the block-verification game. This is known to be very resource intensive, in both terms of energy consumption and time.
Qtum is among the first fully decentralized and Turing-complete blockchain stacks to utilize an attractive and much more energy-efficient method to maintain coherence: the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, rendering attacks costly and inefficient, without having to waste precious computational resources and energy.
Further increasing efficiency, bitcoin’s UTXO transaction model, implemented on Qtum, allows the network to process several transactions in parallel and in any given order. Unlike Ethereum’s architecture, which demands all transactions to be processed one at a time.
Bridging the Gap between Blockchains and the Business World
To close the gap between legacy business sectors and the blockchain space, Qtum introduces a toolkit for comprehensive Smart Contract Lifecycle Management (or SCLM), which comprises tools and methods to standardize the workflow of business smart contract development.
This includes the formally verifiable translation of human-readable agreements to machine smart contracts, and the error-resilient specification of their elements, terms, and conditions. With this the SCLM toolkit ensures that smart contracts behave exactly as specified by the negotiating parties, leaving little to no room for unpleasant surprises.
Cooperating with a series of partners and third parties, Qtum aims to establish a smart contract hub, offering secure and thoroughly tested contract templates, tailor fitted for a multitude of industries and use cases, such as supply chain management, telecommunications, IoT, social networking, and more. With this, it will be easier than ever for established sectors and legacy institutions to interface with blockchain technology and enjoy their benefits.
Pictures via Qtum.org
