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.
Turtlecoin is a privacy coin that is forked from Bytecoin. Because of this, turtlecoin has Bytecoin’s privacy aspects to it called RingCT. This coin is more of a meme coin, but there are a lot of serious tech advancements as well. For example, they have a 30-second block time. They also plan on having simple smart contracts sometime soon, since they say they already started development. They have 35 developers on the team and they also plan on somehow making the blockchain smaller to sync faster, but this is TBA on the roadmap, and the details of this are not out yet. Turtle coin uses the cryptonight_lite_v7 algorithm so it is ASIC resistant. Born on the 9th day of December 2017, TurtleCoin faced a backlash from a couple of online forums, not because it had such a funny name, but since its initial single command line and included TRTL giveaways. Luckily, TurtleCoin of about three months later is grown a lot and has various versions compatible with Apple, Windows and Linux OS. Turtlecoin could be the ideal project to get involved in while it is still in the initial stages. There is more potential for return on investment with a microcap coin than there are with established altcoins. Moreover, you do not have to hand over tokens in an overhyped crowd sale to be a part of this. All you really need to do is download the mining software and get hashing. The coin is one of the easiest to mine as was the developer’s intention. Moreover, given the exciting roadmap that the team has ahead for the project, the future prospects also look quite promising. Private smart contracts and no sync blockchains could push the coin towards mass adoption. Fast With blocks being created every 30 seconds on the Turtlecoin blockchain and transactions taking just seconds, sending and paying with TRTL is a breeze. Easy Having an extremely active development team and a lively, helpful community, you can start using TRTL in minutes, no matter your familiarity and/or expertise with cryptocurrencies in general. Mining TRTL is also very easy to get into with simple, detailed how-to guides. Safe With its beginnings as a fork of Bytecoin, Turtlecoin offers the same degree of privacy and anonimity with its use of ring-signatures. Just like using paper cash, paying with TRTL allows you to spend your money the way you want. Being completely open source, the TurtleCoin project is growing daily. We actively encourage the community to jump in with fresh ideas, no matter your skillset or level of experience. Just hop into the discord and say hello!