QuarkChain wants to solve blockchain scalability issues by using a two-layered blockchain structure as their proposed solution to become a scalable third generation blockchain. Using clustered two-layered blockchains, the QuarkChain Network introduces their version of a sharding-based architecture that aims to meet the global commercial standard.
The scaling solution the QuarkChain team is proposing is comparable to the on-chain scaling solutions the Ethereum Foundation is planning on implementing in 2019, with the difference that QuarkChain has no plans (yet) to move towards Proof-of-Stake mining.
QuarkChain team wants to maintain the core values of blockchain technology (decentralization combined with security) while delivering 100,000+ on-chain transactions per second.
The root chain runs on a proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm, comparable to that of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Hence, if a fork occurs on the main chain, the fork with the longest chain is the prevailing chain.
Each shard runs a consensus called root-chain-first PoW algorithm. If a shard happens to fork, a node needs to compare their corresponding root chains to determine which fork is the valid one.
Recording and keeping track of all transactions on a single blockchain is resource intensive and makes it difficult for blockchain technology to scale and handle a large amount of transactions needed for commercial scale usage.
This is the reason why the QuarkChain team introduces the concept of “clustering” miners, so that mini-nodes can work together in order to create a full node. Each mini-node within a cluster operates to validate a subset of blockchains and then bands together to form the complete picture of all transactions.
The basic idea behind the proposed two-layered blockchain model is to partition a global system state into multiple sub-states called shards. When using the sharding method, the transactions are processed relatively independently in each shard.
This results in the capacity of the system being able to increase as the numbers of shards and nodes increase. QuarkChain allows for multiple honest nodes to operate forming a cluster running as a “super-full” node.
