Qtum Releases Whitepaper Detailing Mobile Smart Contracts Platform

March 7th, 2017 at 9:00 am UTC · 4 min read

Qtum is a smart contract, value transfer protocol that employs proof-of-stake consensus for industry use cases. The paper titled, Smart-Contract Value-Transfer Protocols on a Distributed Mobile Application Platform, was authored by the co-founders of the Qtum project, Patrick Dai, Neil Mahi, Jordan Earls and the project’s Scientific Advisor Dr. Alex Norta.

Mobile Support

Qtum’s UTXO-based blockchain supports the SPV (Simple Payment Verification) protocol from launch, which will allow lite wallets, running on mobile devices, to engage natively with decentralized applications and smart contracts for the first time. This feature also allows IoT devices to be secured and operated with smart contracts. Lite wallets allow users to interact with the network without having to download and sync with the entire blockchain, enabling low bandwidth/storage access to smart contracts. With SPV support, transactions can be signed by the device itself rather than having to rely on third-party services to relay messages. The Foundation recently illustrated their mobile functionality in a demo video on their website (https://qtum.org/en/videos/qtum-technical-introduction-and-demonstration).

Getting smart contracts to work on smartphones and tablets heralds a new age in the field of decentralized computation. With about half of all Internet traffic being generated by mobile devices, every real-world use case for decentralized applications would massively benefit from mobile support – especially if we’re taking the tendencies of developing markets into account”  — Patrick Dai, Co-founder & CEO of the Qtum Project

Account Abstraction Layer

The Account Abstraction Layer, described in the whitepaper, is what allows Qtum’s UXTO-based blockchain to seamlessly interact with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and more virtual machines down the line. By enabling smart contract execution on a UTXO platform, contracts are given more functionality thanks to the relative complexity of the UTXO model compared to an Ethereum-account like model. In addition to mobile support for smart contracts and dApps, Qtum’s UTXO structure gives users more traceability of smart contracts while offering more privacy with blockchain innovations like Change Addresses (CA) and more privacy enhancements in the pipeline.

“This whitepaper fills the gap in the state of the art by presenting the Qtum smart-contract framework that aims for socio technical application suitability, the adoption of formal-semantics language expressiveness, and the provision of smart-contract template libraries for rapid best-practice industry deployment.” — Alex Norta, Scientific Advisor of the Qtum Project

Smart-Contract Lifecycle Management

The whitepaper addresses many concerns presented by industry users because of what happened with the case of the Ethereum DAO attack. Smart Contract Lifecycle Management aims to resolve this issue and other potential issues by allowing contract collaboration, negotiation, review, and tracking. Blockchain technology’s inherent distributed nature allows for contracts to run without being interrupted; however, change is the nature of life and contracts need updating to reflect new landscapes.

With smart-contract management, contracts can evolve according to cross-organizational collaboration. Smart-contract management can help establish trust between businesses with proper security vetting by collaborating parties. Additionally, smart-contract management enables contracts to be more like living documents and when situations changes, (i.e., terms are broken in the contract, such as a delay) parties can determine if they want to amend or close the contract.

“Qtum aims to revolutionize business processes and the way that business interact with their customers by making smart contract technology mobile and practical. The SPV protocol allows smart contracts to move from servers and laptops, into IoT and mobile devices.” — Jordan Earls, co-founder of the Qtum Project

About Qtum

Qtum is an open source value transfer protocol and decentralized application platform. The development team hails from multiple countries around the globe and is a collection of top experts in the industry. The Qtum Foundation, headquartered in Singapore, is the decision-making body that drives the project development. The Qtum Foundation has engaged one of the world’s leading professional service providers, PwC, for project management support. Learn more at https://qtum.org

Contact

John Scianna

[email protected]

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