QuarkChain is a secure, permission-less, scalable, and decentralized blockchain. One of the goals of QuarkChain is to utilize sharding technology to deliver over 1 million transactions per second (tps). Essentially, QuarkChain markets itself as a peer-to-peer blockchain with a high capacity throughput to help deliver fast and secure decentralized applications. The team behind QuarkChain created this blockchain to resolve the issue of scalability that all the major blockchains are currently facing. The team feels that because of the urgency of this issue, the Bitcoin community simply cannot afford to wait until they all agree on a solution. Instead, they feel that by offering different solutions, such as the one inherent in QuarkChain, this compels the community to split via a hard fork and find the solution that works best. QuarkChain encourages increased decentralization through multiple cheap nodes that then create a cluster that works as a super-full node. This prevents the high expenses associated with super-full nodes when the tps gets high. In terms of protection, all transactions within QuarkChain get the protection of 50 percent of the network’s hash power. This makes a double-spending attack incredibly challenging, particularly when combined with QuarkChain’s decentralized nature. QuarkChain relies on a two-layer blockchain structure. Sharding blockchains known as shards are the first layer, while the second layer is a root blockchain that confirms the shards’ blocks.The major work on QuarkChain began in Q2 2017 with research into the problem of blockchain scalability. In Q4 of that year, the team drafted the whitepaper. In February 2018, it released the white paper and completed verification code 0.1. March 2018 saw the 0.1 versions of both the wallet and testnet. Now in Q2, the team is working on the testnet 1.0 and smart contract 0.1. In Q4 2018, the team will have the QuarkChain Core 1.0, along with the mainnet 1.0 and the SmartWallet 1.0. By Q2 2019, both the SmartWallet and QuarkChain Core will be in their 2.0 versions. QuarkChain is a decentralized blockchain network that aims to resolve the issues of scalability that plague existing networks by using sharding technology. In this way, QuarkChain can dramatically extend the usefulness of blockchain technology since many applications are limited by the scalability of existing blockchain networks. The project is still in progress, but QuarkChain has already made many positive steps and already began invite-based beta testing for the testnet, showing significant progress and potential. The main features of Quarkchain are: 1. Reshardable two-layered blockchain: Quarkchain consists of two layers of blockchains. We apply elastic sharding blockchains (shards) as the first layer, and a root blockchain as the second layer that confirms the blocks from the first layer. The second layer that confirms the blocks from the first layer. The second layer is flexible to be resharded as needed without changing the root layer. 2. Guaranteed security by market-driven collaborative mining: To ensure the security of all transactions, a game-theoretic framework is designed for incentives, where at least 50% of overall hash powers are allocated to the root chain to prevent double spending attack on any transactions. 3. Anti-centralized horizontal scalability: In any blockchain network with a high TPS, a super-full node can be extremely expensive, which encourages centralization. In contrast, QuarkChain allows multiple cheap nodes forming a cluster to replace a super-full node. 4. Efficient cross-shard transactions: Cross-shard transactions in QuarkChain can be issued at any time, and confirmed in minutes. The speed of cross-shard transactions increases linearly as the number of shards increases. 5. Simple account management: There is only one account needed for the entire blockchain (shards) in QuarkChain. All cryptocurrencies from different shards are stored in one smart wallet.
nOS is a virtual operating system that introduces a new, decentralized internet. On this new internet user data is safe, and it only goes where the user wants it to go. nOS solves key issues surrounding dApp development, deployment, discovery, and interaction, allowing for true adoption of decentralized applications and blockchain technology. Because applications can choose to make their back-ends fully open-source and transparent, this new implementation of the World Wide Web is defined as the Open Internet. On nOS, applications and websites can be deployed in a completely open and decentralized manner by integrating smart contracts, client-side code, and public-key cryptography. Unlike server-side backend code, smart contracts can be open for all to read, allowing users to review how their data will be transmitted before any final commitments to action. Client-side code and other frontend materials can be distributed via nOS Filesystem, a decentralized file sharing protocol that allows for secure and transparent distribution of static files. By serving both backend logic and frontend material in an open-source, decentralized manner, true transparency between user and application can be achieved. dApps that are deployed to nOS can be accessed through nOS Client, a software solution for desktop and mobile that (among other features) introduces nOS Browser. nOS Browser functions as a web browser, with the added benefit that it integrates with the nOS Protocol, a blockchain-powered web protocol that facilitates secure and open accessibility of nOS dApps. The nOS Protocol resolves domain names that exist on nOS Name Service, a blockchain-powered decentralized implementation of a Domain Name Service, and allows for dApps to register domain names which are discoverable on nOS (e.g. mydapp.neo or my-dapp.eth). The dApp Gateway is a user-friendly dApp discovery platform (or “App Store”) where rankings are decided in a completely decentralized manner via Decentralized Authority. In order to achieve the features such as the ones described above, nOS is powered by the nOS Utility Token. The nOS Utility Token employs various staking and reward utilities which are intended for developers who wish to deploy and maintain dApps on nOS, and for end-users who wish to practice governance by Decentralized Authority. nOS eliminates the need for end-users to manually exchange crypto-currencies in order to make use of various dApps. By integrating crypto-currency exchange APIs, nOS Client automatically converts primary blockchain platform currencies (e.g. NEO/GAS for NEO, ETH for Ethereum) into the required amount of application tokens that are needed to make specific transactions or invocations.