About Quai Network

Every blockchain before Quai accepted a trade. Bitcoin chose security and gave up throughput. Newer networks chose throughput and gave up the open, energy-anchored security of proof-of-work. The result is a decade of money that is either hard to use or easy to capture.

Quai's founding thesis is that the trade was never fundamental — it was an artifact of running consensus on a single chain. By organizing many chains into a hierarchy secured by one shared pool of mining work, Quai scales transaction capacity by adding chains rather than pushing one chain past its limits, while every chain inherits the full security of the network.

The goal is a complete monetary system: QUAI, a deflationary store of value, and QI, an energy-priced medium of exchange — both produced by the same open mining process, both usable at sub-penny fees.

Scale by adding chains, not by trusting fewer people.

Quai's design reduces to four mechanisms working together. Each is covered in depth on the technology page and in the docs.

• Hierarchical chains

  One Prime chain coordinates Region chains, which coordinate the Zone chains where transactions execute — built to expand to nine zones across the Cyprus, Paxos, and Hydra regions as demand grows.

  Hierarchical structure +

• Merged mining

  A single hash secures Prime, Region, and Zone simultaneously. More chains never means divided security — and per-transaction energy cost falls as the network grows.

  Merged mining +

• PoEM consensus

  Proof of Entropy Minima resolves blocks by measured entropy instead of waiting out forks, so every node agrees on the head instantly — the property that lets many chains stay coordinated.

  PoEM explained +

• Two tokens, one system

  QUAI is scarce and EVM-programmable; QI is a UTXO-based token whose emission tracks mining difficulty, tying its value to real energy cost. Conversion between them is protocol-native.

  Tokenomics overview +

Quai began in 2018 as blockchain-scalability research with roots at GridPlus and academic collaboration at the University of Texas at Austin, supported by National Science Foundation-funded work. That research matured into Dominant Strategies, the core development company behind the protocol, the go-quai client, and the quais SDK.

The protocol's rules are enforced the way proof-of-work intends: by open participation. All core software is open source under the dominant-strategies GitHub organization, mining requires no permission or KYC, and the research behind consensus — including the PoEM paper and its formal security proof — is published and peer-reviewable. Early backers include Polychain Capital and Alumni Ventures.

1. 2018

   The research begins

   Work on scalable proof-of-work starts with roots at GridPlus and the University of Texas at Austin, asking whether PoW's security can be kept while throughput scales.

2. 2022–2024

   Iterative testnets

   The network hardens through successive public testnets — Garden, Orchard, and the Colosseum era — while the tooling stack (quais SDK, Pelagus wallet, Quaiscan) takes shape.

3. 2023

   PoEM published

   The Proof of Entropy Minima paper is published on arXiv, formalizing the consensus mechanism that gives Quai instant, fork-free agreement across many chains.

4. 2024

   Security formally proven

   "A Better Proof-of-Work Fork Choice Rule" delivers the formal security analysis behind PoEM, grounding the design in peer-reviewable cryptographic argument.

5. February 4, 2025

   Mainnet genesis

   Quai Network's mainnet launches with the Cyprus-1 zone live, chain ID 9, and open GPU mining from block one.

6. 2025

   SOAP and merged-mining expansion

   Project SOAP routes merge-mining subsidies from SHA-256, Scrypt, and KawPow miners into continuous QUAI buybacks and burns, with StratumX providing decentralized mining infrastructure.