The Quantstamp ICO whitepaper leaves us impressed from the outset. While nice concepts are a dime a dozen, as we proceed throughout this evaluate we’re of the firm perception that additionally, you will gain a sense of a blockchain providing that has real utility, as well as imagination and the potential for sturdy execution.
CEO Richard Ma is a self-described “strategic thinker who cares for the wellbeing of these around him.” Ma is considered an Algorithmic Portfolio Manager. This is a crucial distinction among fund managers. It means choices are based more on proven formulation than they’re trader’s intuition, in essence a preferable methodology for modern traders.
The Quantstamp ICO crew, in a scientific method, assert that “blockchain networks are safe however smart contracts are not.” Clear arguments might be made for this assertion: the Ethereum Decentralized Autonomous Organization itself suffered large losses throughout its stand-up (ICO) phase.
Safety issues like these are a serious obstacle to wider adoption of the Ethereum network because they erode trust in smart contracts.
Quantstamp’s street advertising and marketing campaign seems to have coined the time period “proof of care”, however general what they’re utilizing is a newish concept called “proof of audit,” or proof that the thing in query has been audited. We discuss this in the next section.
Quantstamp ICO Proof-of-Audit
We notably want to provide adequate rationalization for the nascent concept “Proof-of-Audit,” in reviewing the Quantstamp ICO offering. The reason for this is that “proof” concepts are native to applied cryptography and so they, like many terms with reliable meanings, may be perverted by the course of commerce to imply all types of things, in comparable fashion that “open supply” and “free and open supply” have come to tackle their own meanings while working in very similar circles.
The mandatory involvement of human actors is identified as the chief problem with the existing infrastructure auditing smart contracts. The authors accurately point out that this should be done on the rolling assumption that there aren’t any bad actors within the corporations being entrusted with smart contract auditing and review. The installment of such bad actors is, doubtlessly, well within the attain of these motivated by self-interest to design corrupt offerings. However the equally negative potential of inherently flawed smart contracts that finally steal from the public.
The essential mission of Quantstamp is to automate the verification of smart contracts on the Ethereum network, removing human actors within the trusted sense however allowing them to continue participating as members of the network utilizing QSP tokens to affect events. By automating the verification of smart contracts and building such verifications into the essential implementation of Ethereum software, one of the most apparent and largest benefits achieved is a scarcity of lost of funds to low-quality or poorly written smart contracts. Smart contracts can be burdened with an additional function: their proof-of-audit (or not).
Proof-of-audit is an idea used in other ICOs as well, but in a slightly totally different respect. Many schemes which require one party to maintain a certain state of affairs as a part of the agreement (such as decentralized storage solutions) have mandatory, automated proof-of-audit schemes whereby the network merely runs checks to ensure that the data paid for continues to be accessible and matches the data stored on the contract. Clearly the Quantstamp ICO team is presenting us with a different meaning of the term.
Quantstamp Network Actors
QSP tokens are used between various types of network contributors, all of whom serve totally different roles within the Quantstamp network, which features both independently, or alongsideside, the Ethereum network.
Contributors – The Human Aspect
Contributors will likely be security researchers and people working in carefully-aligned fields who write software meant to audit smart contracts written for the Ethereum network. This network factor would appear to encompass each components of security analysis – those that are breaking it and those that are building it (who are equally necessary). They’re to be compensated in Quantstamp ICO tokens (QSPs).
Validators – An Answer to Mining
Validators are one other important part of the network. Like all decentralized networks, governance and consensus will matter a terrific deal within the Quantstamp network. As such, validators play the position of validating transactions on the chain as well as contracts previously verified by the network. This is, in essence, a way of “mining” the Quantstamp network.