Qtum is a decentralized and open-source smart contracts platform and value transfer protocol. Qtum uses proof-of-stake consensus, meaning node operators are rewarded for validating transactions. It is a DGP governed blockchain where community participants can vote to change certain network parameters. Qtum is built on a bitcoin core fork, but the foundation has created its own hybrid blockchain with the help of several key tools. The coin uses bitcoin’s chain because of its simple and stable nature, allowing the foundation to build upon it more easily. As the QTUM project is a hybrid of Bitcoin and Ethereum, its team comprises of members from both Bitcoin and Ethereum community. They also have team members who formerly worked with Tencent, Alibaba, Nasdaq etc. Apart from that, they are backed by some notable VCs and prominent people from the Blockchain community such as Patrick Dai (Project Co-Founder), Neil Mahi (Chief Blockchain Architect/Co-Founder) and Jordan Earls (Lead Developer/Co-Founder). Qtum provides a Turing-complete blockchain stack and is able to execute smart contracts and decentralised applications like the Ethereum blockchain. Qtum builds on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model and uses the Proof-of-Stake algorithm. It is backed by some highly prominent members of the blockchain community such as Anthony Di Iorio, Xu Star, Bo Shen, David Lee, Jehan Chu and Roger Ver. Qtum sold over 10 million dollars’ worth of its tokens after only 90 minutes, eventually raising a total value of $15.7 million before stopping the campaign early after only 5 days. They raised a total amount of 11,156.766 bitcoins (BTC) and 77,081.031 ether (ETH) in exchange for the 51 million Qtum tokens being distributed to the public. In Qtum’s whitepaper, 51% of the coins were distributed to the public via the crowdfunding campaign. Of the remaining 49%, 29% of the coins would be allocated as community incentives, and the remaining 20% would be distributed to the early backers and development team.
Aeon is a mobile-friendly, lightweight privacy coin. Similar to the way that Litecoin is a lighter supplement to Bitcoin, you can look at Aeon as Monero’s little brother. The Monero community is wholly focused on privacy and anonymity for the end-user. This focus has its perks but has caused the coin to fall behind from a usability standpoint. Aeon builds upon Monero’s CryptoNote hash while adding some lightweight functionality of its own. Aeon is the lighter, faster version of Monero. Although both projects share the same underlying privacy protocol, CryptoNote, Aeon is striving to be more accessible. The project is doing so by implementing a lightweight mining algorithm, smaller blockchain, and optional anonymity. As Monero grows, Aeon could very well grow with it. While you would use Monero for transactions in which you want to assure privacy, you may find Aeon to be a suitable substitute for day-to-day exchanges in which guaranteed anonymity isn’t as important.