Quai Network FAQs

Answers to the most common questions about Quai Network: what it is, how its two tokens work, how mining works, and what has changed since mainnet. Last updated October 2026.

General

What is Quai Network?

Quai Network is a scalable, programmable Proof-of-Work Layer-1 blockchain built as a hierarchy of chains. Many chains process transactions in parallel while sharing one layer of mining security, which gives sub-cent fees without giving up Proof-of-Work decentralization.

Quai's goal is a new monetary system that is decentralized, cheap, fast and tied to real-world value. It does that with two native tokens: QUAI, scarce hard money for savings and smart contracts, and QI, the energy dollar, digital cash for everyday payments.

What is energy based money?

Energy based money is money whose supply is tied to the real energy spent to produce it, so no one can create more of it for free. On Quai, both tokens are created only by Proof-of-Work mining, and QI's supply is designed to track the cost of energy. Read the full explainer: Energy Based Money: Quai Network's Vision for the 21st Century.

When did Quai mainnet launch?

The Quai Foundation mined the genesis block on February 4, 2025, and public mining opened on February 5, 2025. QUAI became transferable on February 19, 2025, and QI mining activated on April 16, 2025.

What has changed since mainnet?

The biggest upgrades since launch are SOAP (December 2025), the Singularity fork (March 2026) and the Polaris fork (announced October 2026). Each is explained below. For everything else, see the roadmap and the blog.

Tokens and supply

What is Quai's two-token model?

• QUAI is the store of value and the gas token for smart contracts. Its issuance grows only logarithmically with mining difficulty, so it gets scarcer as the network grows.
• QI is the energy dollar. Its issuance grows linearly with mining difficulty, so each QI is designed to represent a constant amount of energy. It runs on a UTXO ledger with cash-like privacy.

Both tokens are paid out as block rewards, and miners choose which one they receive. See the tokenomics overview for the full model.

Can I convert between QUAI and QI?

Yes. The protocol converts between QUAI and QI at a rate set by relative mining difficulty, with no intermediary. In the Pelagus wallet this is the Market Make feature. Conversions execute at the next Prime block and are locked for two weeks. For DeFi, QI is also available as wrapped QI (WQI) on the QUAI ledger.

Is QI a stablecoin?

QI is a decentralized alternative to stablecoins, sometimes called a flatcoin. It is not pegged to the dollar and has no bank reserves behind it. New QI is minted only through mining, in proportion to mining difficulty, so its supply follows the real cost of energy and compute. It started with a supply of zero. Learn more in What is QI? The energy dollar for the AI economy.

Is QI private?

QI has cash-like privacy. It uses fixed denominations on a UTXO ledger, and the protocol enforces that addresses are never reused, so payments are hard to link together without slow zero-knowledge proofs.

How does QUAI's supply work?

Since the Singularity fork, Quai's supply follows one simple formula:

Total supply = genesis unlocks + mining emissions − SOAP burns

Genesis unlocks have been cut sharply by the Singularity and Polaris forks, and SOAP burns QUAI every day. As SOAP grows, net emissions are designed to trend toward zero. For the full breakdown, including the unlock schedule, read QUAI tokenomics: supply, emissions and unlock schedule. Track it live at supply.qu.ai.

What is SOAP?

SOAP, the Subsidized Open-market Acquisition Protocol, went live on December 17, 2025 at Prime block 1,171,500. Quai miners also merge-mine Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ravencoin. Instead of going to the miner, the rewards from those parent chains go to the protocol, which uses them to buy QUAI on the open market, and the QUAI it buys is burned. Zcash and Bitcoin are planned next.

SOAP burns over 300 million QUAI a year, more than 75% of all newly mined QUAI. Track it live at soap.qu.ai, and read how SOAP reshapes Proof-of-Work economics or the SOAP docs.

What was the Singularity fork?

The Singularity fork went live on March 19, 2026 at Prime block 1,530,500. Investors, Dominant Strategies and the Quai Foundation burned their future vested unlocks: about 1.67 billion QUAI, or 81.1% of all future genesis unlocks. The protocol now skips those addresses, so the tokens can never enter circulation.

Singularity also introduced the supply formula above and doubled the workshares allowed per block, from 16 to 32, split evenly between SHA-256 and Scrypt miners.

What is the Polaris fork?

The Polaris fork, announced on October 13, 2026 and in full effect from the October 30, 2026 unlock cutoff, permanently burns 236,456,538 QUAI of the founders' and Dominant Strategies' remaining genesis unlocks. Together with Singularity, that is 1.9 billion genesis QUAI burned.

• Genesis inflation: 13% to under 4% a year
• Total inflation, after SOAP burns: 18% to under 9% a year
• Circulating supply: 77% to 93% of all QUAI
• Monthly genesis unlocks: about 13M to about 3.7M QUAI
• Genesis QUAI left to unlock: 327M to 90M, fully unlocked by early 2029

Mining

How can I mine Quai?

Quai can be mined with three kinds of hardware:

• GPUs using the KawPoW algorithm. KawPoW miners produce Quai's blocks.
• SHA-256 ASICs, the same machines that mine Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, such as a Bitaxe.
• Scrypt ASICs, the same machines that mine Litecoin and Dogecoin.

SHA-256 and Scrypt miners contribute workshares, which add to Quai's security and earn rewards. Through SOAP, the same hashrate also merge-mines Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ravencoin. See the SHA-256 and Scrypt mining guide.

Can I solo mine without a pool?

Yes. StratumX is built into go-quai and lets you solo mine with SHA-256, Scrypt or KawPoW hardware, with no node of your own, no KYC and no fees. Get started at stratumx.org or in the solo mining guide.

What are workshares?

Workshares are mining attempts that come close to a valid block but don't quite make it. Quai counts them toward the weight of the chain and pays the miners who produce them, which keeps rewards steady for smaller miners. Read Proof-of-Work innovation: workshares.

Can I choose between QUAI and QI rewards?

Yes. Miners set a preference in their node or stratum settings to receive QUAI, QI or a mix. Rewards are locked for two weeks by default, and longer optional lockups earn more. Read how to choose between QUAI and QI.

What do I need to run a node?

The docs recommend a fast CPU with 8 or more cores and at least 16 GB of RAM. See the Use Quai hub for node, mining and wallet guides.

Technology

What is Proof-of-Entropy-Minima (PoEM)?

PoEM is Quai's consensus rule. It is Proof-of-Work, but it weighs each block by the work behind it, so every node instantly agrees on which chain is heaviest. That gives instant fork resolution without the long reorganizations of classic Proof-of-Work or the multiple communication rounds of Proof-of-Stake. Workshares also count toward block weight, and Quai's reward research was accepted to AFT 2026.

How is Quai's network structured?

Quai is a hierarchy of chains:

• Prime: the top-level chain that coordinates the whole network. It is secured by all miners.
• Regions: intermediate chains that link Prime and the Zones.
• Zones: the chains where transactions and smart contracts run.

All of them are merge-mined together, so one unit of work secures every chain at once. The network launched with a single Zone and is designed to add more as demand grows.

What is sharding, and how does Quai use it?

Each Zone is a shard that processes its own set of transactions in parallel with the others. Quai adds shards as demand grows instead of fixing capacity at launch, with a design capacity of 50,000+ transactions per second. Running many Zones at once is called multithreaded execution.

What happens when a new shard is added?

Quai adds shards automatically, without a hard fork or a human decision. This is called dynamic sharding.

• The trigger. The protocol watches for congestion: a high uncle-block rate, meaning many miners are finding competing blocks, and blocks that keep hitting their gas limit. When that lasts, the network expands.
• The expansion. New Region and Zone chains are created, and every Region gains Zones so the hierarchy stays balanced.
• Security stays whole. New chains join consensus right away and are merge-mined with all the others, so each one is protected by the full network hashrate rather than a slice of it.
• Capacity goes up, fees stay low. More Zones means more transactions processed in parallel, so blocks stop filling up and fees stay under a cent.
• Routing just works. Every Quai address starts with a prefix that names its Region and Zone, so nodes know instantly which shard a transaction belongs to.

The tradeoff is settlement time between Zones. A transaction is final within its own Zone in seconds, but moving funds to a distant Zone takes longer as the network grows. With 16 Zones, average global settlement is about 21 minutes.

What is merged mining on Quai?

On Quai, merged mining means two things. Inside the network, one block header covers Prime, Region and Zone chains, so a miner's work secures all three at once. Outside the network, Quai miners also merge-mine Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ravencoin, and SOAP turns those rewards into QUAI buybacks and burns. See the merged mining docs.

Is Quai EVM-compatible?

Yes. Each Zone runs an Ethereum-compatible virtual machine, so developers can deploy Solidity smart contracts with familiar tools like Hardhat and the quais.js SDK.

How are fees paid?

Smart contract and QUAI transactions pay gas in QUAI, and QI transactions pay fees in QI. Fees are typically under a cent.

Getting QUAI and wallets

How do I get QUAI?

You can buy QUAI on exchanges including Kraken, MEXC and Gate.io, swap into it through services like ChangeHero and Symbiosis, or mine it. See How to get QUAI for the current list.

How do I get QI?

There are three ways to get QI:

• Mine it. Set your miner preference to QI in your node or stratum settings, or a mix of QUAI and QI. QI is minted only by mining, in proportion to mining difficulty. See how to choose between QUAI and QI.
• Convert QUAI to QI. Use the Market Make feature in the Pelagus wallet. The protocol converts at the next Prime block, and converted funds are locked for two weeks.
• Swap for wrapped QI. For DeFi, swap into WQI, the wrapped version of QI, on Quainance.

Which wallets support Quai?

Pelagus (browser extension), BlipPay (iOS and Android, in beta) and the Tangem hardware wallet all support Quai, and a MetaMask Snap is available. See qu.ai/wallets.

You can also use a smart wallet built into Quainance. Sign in with an account or wallet you already use, such as Email, X, MetaMask, Rabby or Phantom, to create or reconnect to your Quai smart wallet right in the app. From there you can fund it, swap, trade and provide liquidity.

What can I do with QUAI and QI on-chain?

Quainance lets you bridge USDT from Ethereum, swap and provide liquidity on Quai. Symbiosis connects Quai to Base and other chains. Browse more apps in the ecosystem directory.

Is QUAI regulated in Europe?

Quai's MiCA whitepaper was approved in August 2025, which supports QUAI listings in the European Union. For the U.S. view, read Built Like a Commodity: Quai and the CLARITY Act.

Community and support

How can I get involved in the Quai community?

Join the conversation on Discord, Telegram, X, Reddit and YouTube. Quai Friday X Spaces run every week, and announcements go out on the Telegram announcements channel.

Is there a Quai community in my language?

Yes. Besides the main English group, @QuaiNetwork, there are community-maintained Quai Telegram groups in other languages:

• Arabic: @quainetwork_arabic
• Hindi and Urdu: @QuaiNetworkHindi_Urdu
• Indonesian: @QuaiNetwork_Indonesian
• Japanese: @QuaiNetwork_Japanese
• Korean: @Quai_Korea
• Mandarin: @QuaiNetwork_Mandarin
• Russian: @QuaiNetwork_Ru
• Turkish: @QuaiNetwork_Turkish
• Ukrainian: @quainetworkua
• Vietnamese: @QuaiNetwork_Vietnamese

Where can I get help?

• support.qu.ai: Quai's support desk
• Quai docs: guides for using, mining and building on Quai
• Whitepapers and lectures
• GitHub: open-source code
• Network dashboards: soap.qu.ai, supply.qu.ai and explorer.qu.ai

Developers

How can developers start building on Quai?

• Start with the developer docs and the Solidity deployment guide.
• Use the quais.js SDK (npm: quais) and Hardhat.
• Ask questions in the developer Discord.

This FAQ is for information only and is not financial advice.