Defining Quant

Quant Network is a blockchain operating system project that looks to facilitate interoperability between blockchains with the Overledger OS. It differs from most blockchain projects in that it is not open-source code, and many of its features are patented by the team. 

Quant Network was launched in late 2017 after Founder, Gilbert Verdian, saw a need for traditional enterprises and governments for faster, more efficient data processing capabilities. Quant Network aims to highlight the power of digital ledger technology (DLT) to enhance existing operations at global companies.

True to its mission, Quant and the Overledger Network support interoperability between public blockchains and private ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Binance Chain, Stellar, EOS, IOTA, Constellation, JP Morgan’s Quorum blockchain, the R3 Corda blockchain, and the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. Let’s take a look at what both Coinbase and Binance found interesting enough to list the QNT token.

Quant Architecture

The Quant Network is made up of a robust suite of products and services. Everything Quant has to offer is meant to enhance the regular technical operations of enterprises with the help of DLT. Most importantly, you should understand that Quant Network is not a blockchain itself.

Rather than being a blockchain with applications built on top of it, Quant is made up of various components, such as the technologically agnostic Overledger OS blockchain operating system, multi-chain apps (mApps), the Overledger Network, the Overledger Network Marketplace, the Treasury, and the QNT token. Technological agnosticity refers to the fact that Overledger is not restricted to a single technological platform to perform its tasks.

Overledger Network

The most important single aspect of Quant is the Overledger Network. This is an OS that is based off of Google’s Kubernetes technology. As stated before, Quant Network is not a blockchain - it is really more of an API highway that allows different blockchains to interact with each other. Think of Overledger as the pavement that those APIs ride on.

Overledger manages to do this with DLT gateways supported by representational state transfer application programming interfaces, or REST APIs. REST APIs give developers the ability to build new applications on a blockchain by recreating the exact developing environment of that blockchain. By deploying an app via a REST API on Overledger, blockchains become interoperable by using that API highway. 

Such capabilities make trading data and value between blockchains incredibly easy compared to the alternative of wrapping tokens. The ease of communication between blockchains also reduces the common barriers to entry that enterprise users experience by way of fees and complicated technical procedures. In this case, increased accessibility should invite greater adoption.

Since Overledger’s DLT Gateway is basically a communication protocol, it does not require interaction with applications on each DLT. This removes the need for forks and consensus for the protocol to function properly with no single-point-of-failure transactions.

Overledger Network Marketplace

One of the pivotal pieces of the Overledger network is the marketplace. This is not your typical marketplace or exchange with cryptos where they are swapped or atomic swapped and moved into different wallets. This is a digital marketplace where digital apps can trade data between platforms.

Transactions made in the Marketplace use the Treasury to execute. The Treasury is a handful of smart contracts built on the Ethereum network, and acts as a third party facilitator of transactions between applications. Each transaction generates fee revenue, which the Quant Network takes in.

Applications that need to make transactions between chains pay fees in QNT, Quant Network’s native token. The Treasury custodies the QNT tokens until the transaction is completed through the smart contract. Cost for each transaction changes with the price of QNT, whose price is derived from price oracles.

mApps

Multi-chain applications are - you guessed it - apps that are built on multiple blockchains. While the concept of the application itself is similar to a dApp, mApps differ from dApps in that a dApp can function only on a single blockchain at a time. Ethereum is currently the most popular dApp platform.

MApps are made of Treaty Contracts, which allow smart contracts from different blockchains to cooperate. This means that if a developer finds Stellar easier to develop on than Ethereum, they can build a mApp on Stellar, then deploy it on Overledger, where the mApp can be used in the Ethereum ecosystem. 

This also means, however, that the limitations of each blockchain apply. An app built on NEO but deployed on Ethereum through Overledger would be limited by Ethereum’s lower TPS. 

This unique functionality of Quant’s allows projects to utilize the best part of each blockchain connected to their own. Bitcoin’s security features would be an attractive addition to many other networks, which Overledger facilitates.

Seeq

Seeq is a distributed search engine that can retrieve data from multiple blockchain sources on the Overledger Network and display them via HTML. It uses Overledger to log and display the full transaction history from all DLTs it has access to. 

The Seeq tool is useful for data and business analysts to gain a broader understanding of how, where, and when transactions are being made on any blockchain. The data is laid out in a user-friendly format on Seeq Explore, which is a web-based analysis, visualization, and case management tool.

Rather than having to pore over multiple separate block explorers to find transaction data within and between networks, Seeq allows Quant Network customers to search through all the data in one UI.

$QNT

The native token on Quant Network is QNT.  The total supply of QNT is 14,612,493 tokens, 13,275,967 of which are in circulation as of September 2021. Major listings on Binance and Coinbase have recently catapulted QNT into the top 50 of cryptocurrencies by market cap.

The main purpose of QNT is to allow services or apps on Overledger to gain access to other blockchains through the Overledger Network Marketplace. The act of gaining access to share data across chains requires paying a fee, which is paid in QNT and denominated in US dollar value. These fees are collected by the Quant Network Treasury.

Simply put, QNT is used to pay the toll for apps using Quant Network’s ‘highway’ that connects blockchains to each other.

The value of QNT is purportedly derived from the demand developers and their apps have for access to the Quant network itself. The more mApps are deployed on Overledger, the more QNT will be needed, which increases demand for QNT. The more QNT one holds, the greater amount of transactions a mApp can make on the network.

Takeaways

The structure of Quant Network may seem simple enough when compared to other far more elaborate projects. The fact that Quant is not a blockchain may lend itself to its relative simplicity. However, this does not mean that Quant Network is any less related to the blockchain space.

The main stated goal of Quant Network is to make DLTs interoperable, so they may share all their most beneficial aspects with one another. After just a few years of existence and with many enterprise partners in its pocket, Quant is well on its way to achieving this goal.