Qortal In A Nutshell

This section is being re-written, as Qortal has seen significant upgrades and changes in the recent past, and is in the process of a 're-birth'.

Qortal is the ONLY true 'next generation internet' platform in existence. Any other that claims to be, is simply incorrect. After review of countless other such projects, none of them can hold a candle to Qortal in regard to truly decentralized and uncensorable data storage, communications, web and application publishing, all with no servers, no DNS, and no middlemen of any kind.

Qortal provides a censorship-free network for a new Internet and systems to be built securely. This technology can provide the world with the freedom we deserve with non-fiat banking, payment transactions, speech, information trade, communication privacy, and more:

• Local wallets that the individual has complete and sole control over
• True peer-to-peer trading (P2P)
• Web hosting and data storage where freedom of speech and trade of information can thrive
• Social media safe haven where only admins of self-created groups can censor and have control over
• Encrypted peer-to-peer text, voice, and video communications
• Mesh network data service with satellite bridging as an alternative to an internet service provider (ISP)
• Infrastructure for ethical third-party projects to build on

The Qortal DevTeam does not have any control over accounts, balances, censorship, etc. It is up to individuals to engage in the new system responsibly and admins to manage their sub-communities without oversight. Qortal does not have any intellectual property or centralized properties for legal responsibility. No government or powers that be can do anything about it other than shut down the entire Internet and ISP backbone. This is simply not realistic as virtually everything operates on the Internet and we would have much bigger problems at that point. We realize this is a debatable topic, but need to focus on the positive that Qortal aims to solve this vulnerability. We have plans to implement a mesh network and satellite bridge ISP alternative to remove the need for existing internet service providers (ISP) and the entire network can be run on devices as low powered as 5w5v (as much as a phone charger) so can easily be run on a solar panel. With this new sovereignty worldwide, we can grow together like never before and unify. This is the beauty of what can come from true decentralization utilizing blockchain technology.

So who controls the codebase of this ambitious project and are there any vulnerabilities? Qortal has a 'Developer Group' with 'Developer Admins' who are elected developers in charge of updating the codebase. The developer group has a 'group approval' based 'vote' over both new version releases and new Anyone can join the Developer Group and become a Dev Admin by proving their contributions, as nothing within Qortal can be bought. Such as account levels and admin privileges. The DevTeam Admins require a group approval (with an on-chain transaction) of 40% in order to issue an auto-update.

Genesis Block took place on June 29th 2020. All of the decisions made at genesis that were determined to be ones that shouldn't have taken place, have all now been resolved as of the end of 2024. A NEW ERA of Qortal is now BEGINNING!

Qortal is not a clone of any other blockchain project. The codebase is written from scratch other than a few bits of code taken from QORA dealing with the transaction framework.

QORA was a previous project that was taken over in 2016, after it was considered a 'dead' project. The Qortal development group at the time, took over the QORA project's development, in an effort to rebuild the project with corrected concepts. Initially, the Qortal project offered to allow the QORA community to 'transition' to Qortal in multiple ways. Though it was later determined that this concept was not a great one, as many of the QORA community decided to take advantage of the Qortal project in multiple ways. This lead to the modification of Qortal to lower the QORA 'burn rewards' to 1%, and the upcoming modification that will remove the application of 'blocksMintedAdjustment' that gave the QORA users a pre-existing level on Qortal. These concepts were deemed failed, and as such have either been removed already, or are in the process of being finalized.

The CIYAM Developers are the group that created the 'AT language', a fully custom hardware-level coding language that powers Qortal's 'ATs' or 'Automated Transactions'. These allow Qortal the REAL cross-blockchain trade functionality, automated decentralized CrowdFunding capability (as demoed in Q-Fund Q-App), automated decentralized Lottery functionality as demoed on apps like 'Q-Lottery', automated decentralized Escrow systems, payments-over-time, automated payments on a schedule, and MUCH more. The ATs of Qortal have just barely been scratched the surface of in regard to their overall functionality, and a lot more will be coming in the future leveraging the extreme power of ATs. Read more about the technology on CIYAM developers website - https://ciyam.org/at.

Qortal is a completely custom-written project, written from scratch due to there being nothing to start with that contained anywhere near the level of decentralization and other features that the project needed to become what it was meant to be. It is built to be a completely independent public utility, owned by no one, and everyone. It is what Bitcoin and all other so-called 'crypto projects' were meant to be, and provides truly unmatched decentralized functionality unlike that of any other.

There is no other project that comes close to Qortal in regard to the ability to create a true 'web3'. By the people, for the people.

More updated information will be coming soon. The information below is kept only for historic purposes, and may or may not still be accurate.

Funding Qortal has been extremely challenging as there is no intellectual property and was launched ethically with no ICO (initial coin offering), pre-mine, or airdrop. All of our developers currently have full-time jobs to support a base income and help with Qortal in their free time. Although it is extremely admirable of the devs to make themselves available for Qortal, it ultimately has caused a slower rate of production than would be possible if we could bring devs on full-time. With such an ambitious and revolutionary project, the rate of production has been a bit frustrating but we are proud to say development is moving forward nonetheless.

So what do we have so far after all these years of hardship and perseverance? Today, Qortal has an amazing community of developers and people of all walks of life, from all over the world, who truly value what we aim for. In just 18 months of launching Qortal, we have nearly as many nodes as Litecoin. Litecoin has been live since November 2013 and for a very long time was the #2 coin in terms of market cap and is extremely well-known. Anyone who has heard of Bitcoin, has most likely also heard of Litecoin. Given these facts, it is obvious that the model with which Qortal was constructed (which had a major focus toward making a larger network of full nodes for security of the overall blockchain) has played out exactly as intended: giving Qortal a much stronger network with more individual validators for the chain and more decentralization.

Phase 1 of our plan was to launch a stable base network, with an immutable ledger, account leveling, sponsorship system, and local wallets. This was quite a hurdle to overcome but we can proudly say that we have succeeded in this objective. Although with that said, as we build this infrastructure from scratch and new features are released, we still have our hoops and hurdles. We have identified areas of improvement, made changes, and foresee further modifications as needed. With limited dev time and resources, prioritizing and completing the workload has been challenging.

During Phase 2, we launched the Trade Portal for peer-to-peer (P2P) trading. BTC was the first coin we had supported in the Trade Portal but was realized to be too slow and costly for the time being, so BTC trading is not live at this time (but will be in the near future). Local wallets currently support QORT, BTC, LTC, DOGE, DGB, and RVN. The Trade Portal currently supports trading of LTC, DOGE, DGB, and RVN. The idea is to provide a gateway of obtaining QORT, and eventually we can circle back to adding more coins. We prioritized Phase 3 for building the new Internet, which we will cover shortly. If there’s anywhere folks should be safely storing their precious coin, it’s within Qortal as only the account holder has control over their keys and their coin cannot be compromised within the system. Q-Chat is also live: a blockchain-based messaging system that still needs a lot of work but currently provides true P2P encrypted messaging. Group messaging is live within Q-Chat but currently does not provide encryption (coming soon). The Voting System has been postponed to focus on other critical areas, but is expected to be implemented during Phase 3. Thereafter, the community will help decide which coins to add to the Trade Portal and local wallets.

Phase 3 has begun! Core version 3.0+ includes the data hosting which creates the opportunity for a new Internet with free web hosting and public data storage. Websites and data can be found within the Qortal UI as with all of the other plugins. Data hosting will eventually allow Q-Chat to have messages that stay on-chain longer than the 24 hour period they do now, including the ability to send pictures, videos and GIFs. Phase 3 will create the stepping stone we seek towards a new Internet where e-commerce and job markets can thrive as well as unhindered freedom of speech and trade of information.

Once we have these key elements in place and mass adoption begins to take place, we can begin to pursue the next sovereign solution: the ISP alternative referred to as Mesh Networking. We’ll have more focus on this area when we have more nodes on the network, although some of our devs are looking into it now. Mesh networking will be possible on the QORTector devices as well as any device with an added antenna solution! Satellite bridging will also be possible and we already have a satellite prototype in development. All of this is certainly possible. When it is ready, we will begin to remove the need for an existing ISP backbone and work towards becoming completely independent.

The last key component to cover with building on Qortal’s infrastructure, is third-party projects. Any project will be able to build in the App Center when it is live and provide a viable alternative to Ethereum. Projects wishing to launch a minting system with tokens will require the DevTeam to vet the project, then the Qortal community to vote for its approval, and then the DevTeam Admins will be authorized to give this asset permission to the project. This will be our way of ensuring only ethical projects wishing to have their own tokens are legitimate, opposed to the historic scam show we've seen unfold on blockchains like Ethereum. To clarify, when a blockchain has its own asset, this is called a coin. Such as Qortal and Ethereum. When projects build on a third-party blockchain so-to-speak, these assets are called tokens, such as ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. We are just getting started and foresee this area of interest increasing exponentially with time as we gain more exposure in the crypto space. Users will be able to opt into these third-party features and services within the Qortal UI. The community will be able to rate and review these apps to let other users know how well received the apps are, just as we see today in the App Store on Apple and Android devices.