New Year’s are celebrated with ceremonies, rituals, fireworks, lights, and all sorts of spectacles. The Magic of the Season revitalizes the spirit to bring about powerful & constructive change. The mark of a new beginning with higher goals and a roadmap on how to get there. So, without further ado, here are the 2020 Roadmap resolutions for Qtum:
The Stakes Get Colder
Unplug your ethernet cables and stick that motherboard in the freezer, because offline staking is coming online in 2020. Breath in that chilly air, because you’ll be able to keep your QTUM offline, safe, & staking with this improvement.
Q1 — First steps first, a Qtum Improvement Proposal to get this off the ground and some design specifications to understand the protocol upgrades, both of which are in the works. Next comes an open-source, proof-of-concept smart contract that allows delegation for offline staking. The first quarter will bring us a great prototype.
Q2 — After that prototype gets running, there will be lots of testing and documentation. Then more testing. You can get your Testnet mojo on. Did we mention testing?
Q3 — Sharing the offline staking goodness with Mainnet. Easy delegation with the Qtum-Qt GUI wallet for deployment on Mainnet. That means it’s going to feel really intuitive delegating your address to an online staker.
Q4 — You won’t just see the Qt-wallet love for offline staking as more wallets will join the offline staking fiesta with 3rd party support.
Phantom of the Blockchain
Some say we don’t have privacy in the digital age, but then there’s Qtum Phantom — a confidential assets solution based on Qtum smart contracts. Create assets veiled in cryptographic secrecy and send them across the galaxy, through the vast amounts of dark matter, and back. Trust no one, don’t ask, don’t tell.
Q1 — Research and development, create and demo confidential tokens, zk-SNARKS are your friend! To get some wholesome background information on the research so far for Confidential Assets, educate yourself with this paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1435
Q2 — Phantom smart contracts deploy on Testnet, demo of confidential tokens, and did we mention testing?
Q3 — The Phantom comes to Mainnet with optimized solutions for reduced Gas consumption — so you can save money by staying private.
Q4 — Phantom integration with more wallets and the Explorer: we know there are confidential asset tokens being exchanged, but have no possible idea what they are, because…confidentiality.
Get Charged! ⚡️
The next positively awesome innovation coming to Qtum is Neutron. Neutron is the infrastructure that the x86 virtual machine and all future virtual machines on Qtum will use. Call it an enabler, a facilitator, an interface architecture… call it Qtum Neutron.
Q1 — The x86 VM is real close, pacing the EVM. Get your Three Letter Acronyms on as API and RPC take the stage.
Q2 — The first smart contract in Rust comes to life. The x86 VM is complete for testing. Did we mention testing? API and RPC are ready for prime time, and it’s also time for “Hello World” and “Hello x86”.
Q3 — Testing goes to the next level with the Neutron Testbench. The new database DeltaDB & SPV support for contracts jump on the network, with the appropriate tools — more tools, more better. Once that’s all squared away, Neutron will be able to run side-by-side with EVM on Testnet (brothers from another mother).
Q4 — Complete Qtum Neutron infrastructure and an optimistic launch on Mainnet with documentation and development specs.
Our vision is 20/20 on these valuable objectives which enable magnitudes of more creativity in code, practice, and products. Building these next-generation staking protocols, privacy tools, and the infrastructure for the virtual machines of tomorrow will define Qtum’s and the blockchain industry’s future for 2020 and beyond.
